On the BBC R4 Today programme there is an item about a new AI based app to help blind people by describing their surroundings in some detail. The app is interactive in that you can ask it where the rest rooms are in a cafe, or to read a menu, or ask it how long to cook a cottage pie, or what the street scene is.
It will be on iPlayer for today, at six forty two, and is three and a half minutes long.
Unfortunately it fades into political correctness towards the end of the item.
I heard a similar article on Radio 4, In Touch, where the use of AI was problematic in face recognition etc.
Yes but there is a snag and one which blind people are annoyed about. If you as asighted person look around you can see people, and some you may recognise. What the company offering free access to the blind has done is not allow you to get a description of any people, that means that any picture that contains a person is flagged as not allowed to be described. Obvious, sly some lawyer somewhere has been worried about privacy, but not really seen that we only want the same as a sighted person would see. The original fuzzed out faces, and that was in the main a good compromise, but now the US company has made the facility unusable out and about as if the AI thinks there is a human in it, it simply tells you you are not allowed to find out what is in the picture. There are a lot of behind the scenes negotiations going on as its blatantly against the spirit of the ADA in the states, and the equality act here and no doubt the same in other countries. I'm not sure what the outcome will be, as Apple apparently have an extension to their scene description system that may get clobbered if the law goes the bonkers way. Brian
I think that the issue was covered up by the programme’s description of the way the app operates with people in view of the camera.
The problem appears to be based on the way people are described, terms like short or fat or any hint of a description of a person’s ethnicity seem to have caused so much difficulty that it proved easier not to describe people at all!
A good idea shot down through political correctness.
Yes, it would be good enough to just say person, and describe the rest, we don't even care if they are naked clothed, male or female, but it would be nice to be able to know which is the gents and which is the ladies bogs, or bathrooms as they say in the states. Brian
Google glasses could have been very useful for people with limited vision, but they seem to have exited development of them.
Andrew
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