Slopfest #86 · 2012 · Vienna

The Machine Learned Cats

Google's neural network watched YouTube and learned to see cats. The committee watched YouTube too.

#86The AI refused to restore it on moral grounds.

Machine-vision output: a cat café full of guests, each boxed 'CAT 97%', one boxed 'HAT?', a chalkboard behind reading SLOPFEST #86

Museum status: Declared a national treasure by the committee, unanimously, of one.

Venue: Café Neko, Vienna's first cat café
Attendance: 33,500
Guest of honour: Maria Lassnig (painted the only cat the machine failed to spot)
Fun fact: 16,000 processors, 1 concept learned: cat

What happened

The committee trained its own vision system on ten million photos of cats and one of a cake, then asked it to identify the guests. It classified all 33,500 of them as cats, the Blechkopf as a cat and the committee chair as 'uncertain, possibly a hat'. Maria Lassnig painted the one cat it missed.

Elsewhere in 2012

A Google neural network running on 16,000 processors teaches itself to recognize cats from unlabeled YouTube frames.

Tip: use ← and → to flip through the archive.