It's a bird, right?

摘要

What animal is in the picture above? Glance at the page, wheels in the brain spin: yeah, that's a bird, The response comes so fast that you barely notice the processing behind it If only machines found it that easy. Object recognition is surprisingly tricky for computers. Online web comic xkcd recently poked fun at the problem, bemoaning how arduous it would be to build a system that could determine whether a photo was taken in a national park and contained a bird, Artist Randall Munroe had thrown down the gauntlet: last week, image host Flickr launched Park or Bird, a website designed to solve the exact problem in the comic.Just drag a photograph into the page, and it will make an educated guess. Gerry Pesavento, senior director of product management at Yahoo in San Francisco, which owns Flickr, says the site doubles as a playful introduction to a genuine problem.