Beyond the Lens

How Video Data is Shaping the Future of AI and Automation

While some community voices are getting worked up over the ability of artificial intelligence to create fresh entertainment content like images and videos, I’d like to zoom out to the bigger picture, the opportunity to combine AI and video to make sense of the messy business-oriented real world, faster, accurately, and continuously.

The OODA Loop

I was reminded of how amazingly superior the human video engine (our brains!) can be relative to other animals when a photo I took of a lion popped up on my screen.

Years ago I toured Kruger National Park in South Africa in a mini van. It’s an eye-goggling and heart-thumping experience to come face to face with a lion in the wild.

But here’s the thing. The lion ignores you so long as you’re in a vehicle. Their brains, wired over the millennia to see humans in their natural world as either predator or prey, cannot ‘see’ us tasty humans in the mini van. They merely see a large object on the Savannah.

Those of us who work with heavy industry can see how the lion executes their own OODA loop, which stands for Observe, Orient, Decide, and Act.