Recent results indicate that the generic descriptors extracted from the convolutional neural networks are very powerful. This paper adds to the mounting evidence that this is indeed the case. We report on a series of experiments conducted for different recognition tasks using the publicly available code and model of the OverFeat network which was trained to perform object classification on ILSVRC13. We use features extracted from the OverFeat network as a generic image representation to tackle the diverse range of recognition tasks of object image classification, scene recognition, fine grained recognition, attribute detection and image retrieval applied to a diverse set of datasets. We selected these tasks and datasets as they gradually move further away from the original task and data the OverFeat network was trained to solve. Astonishingly, we report consistent superior results compared to the highly tuned state-of-the-art systems in all the visual classification tasks on various datasets. For instance retrieval it consistently outperforms low memory footprint methods except for sculptures dataset. The results are achieved using a linear SVM classifier (or L2 distance in case of retrieval) applied to a feature representation of size 4096 extracted from a layer in the net. The representations are further modified using simple augmentation techniques e.g. jittering. The results strongly suggest that features obtained from deep learning with convolutional nets should be the primary candidate in most visual recognition tasks.

The emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and its progressively wider impact on many sectors across the society requires an assessment of its effect on sustainable development. Here we analyze published evidence of positive or negative impacts of AI on the achievement of each of the 17 goals and 169 targets of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. We find that AI can support the achievement of 128 targets across all SDGs, but it may also inhibit 58 targets. Notably, AI enables new technologies that improve efficiency and productivity, but it may also lead to increased inequalities among and within countries, thus hindering the achievement of the 2030 Agenda. The fast development of AI needs to be supported by appropriate policy and regulation. Otherwise, it would lead to gaps in transparency, accountability, safety and ethical standards of AI-based technology, which could be detrimental towards the development and sustainable use of AI. Finally, there is a lack of research assessing the medium-and long-term impacts of AI. It is therefore essential to reinforce the global debate regarding the use of AI and to develop the necessary regulatory insight and oversight for AI-based technologies.

Evidence is mounting that ConvNets are the best representation learning method for recognition. In the common scenario, a ConvNet is trained on a large labeled dataset and the feed-forward units activation, at a certain layer of the network, is used as a generic representation of an input image. Recent studies have shown this form of representation to be astoundingly effective for a wide range of recognition tasks. This paper thoroughly investigates the transferability of such representations w.r.t. several factors. It includes parameters for training the network such as its architecture and parameters of feature extraction. We further show that different visual recognition tasks can be categorically ordered based on their distance from the source task. We then show interesting results indicating a clear correlation between the performance of tasks and their distance from the source task conditioned on proposed factors. Furthermore, by optimizing these factors, we achieve stateof-the-art performances on 16 visual recognition tasks.

Evidence is mounting that Convolutional Networks (ConvNets) are the most effective representation learning method for visual recognition tasks. In the common scenario, a ConvNet is trained on a large labeled dataset (source) and the feed-forward units activation of the trained network, at a certain layer of the network, is used as a generic representation of an input image for a task with relatively smaller training set (target). Recent studies have shown this form of representation transfer to be suitable for a wide range of target visual recognition tasks. This paper introduces and investigates several factors affecting the transferability of such representations. It includes parameters for training of the source ConvNet such as its architecture, distribution of the training data, etc. and also the parameters of feature extraction such as layer of the trained ConvNet, dimensionality reduction, etc. Then, by optimizing these factors, we show that significant improvements can be achieved on various (17) visual recognition tasks. We further show that these visual recognition tasks can be categorically ordered based on their distance from the source task such that a correlation between the performance of tasks and their distance from the source task w.r.t. the proposed factors is observed.

Abstract. Deformable part-based models [1, 2] achieve state-of-the-art performance for object detection, but rely on heuristic initialization during training due to the optimization of non-convex cost function. This paper investigates limitations of such an initialization and extends earlier methods using additional supervision. We explore strong supervision in terms of annotated object parts and use it to (i) improve model initialization, (ii) optimize model structure, and (iii) handle partial occlusions. Our method is able to deal with sub-optimal and incomplete annotations of object parts and is shown to benefit from semi-supervised learning setups where part-level annotation is provided for a fraction of positive examples only. Experimental results are reported for the detection of six animal classes in PASCAL VOC 2007 and 2010 datasets. We demonstrate significant improvements in detection performance compared to the LSVM [1] and the Poselet [3] object detectors.

In the present work we assess the capabilities of neural networks to predict temporally evolving turbulent flows. In particular, we use the nine-equation shear flow model by Moehlis et al. [New J. Phys. 6, 56 (2004)] to generate training data for two types of neural networks: the multilayer perceptron (MLP) and the long short-term memory (LSTM) network. We tested a number of neural network architectures by varying the number of layers, number of units per layer, dimension of the input, weight initialization and activation functions in order to obtain the best configurations for flow prediction. Due to its ability to exploit the sequential nature of the data, the LSTM network outperformed the MLP. The LSTM led to excellent predictions of turbulence statistics (with relative errors of 0.45% and 2.49% in mean and fluctuating quantities, respectively) and of the dynamical behavior of the system (characterized by Poincaré maps and Lyapunov exponents). This is an exploratory study where we consider a low-order representation of near-wall turbulence. Based on the present results, the proposed machine-learning framework may underpin future applications aimed at developing accurate and efficient data-driven subgrid-scale models for large-eddy simulations of more complex wall-bounded turbulent flows, including channels and developing boundary layers.

No abstract

This paper addresses the problem of human pose estimation, given images taken from multiple dynamic but calibrated cameras. We consider solving this task using a part-based model and focus on the part appearance component of such a model. We use a random forest classifier to capture the variation in appearance of body parts in 2D images. The result of these 2D part detectors are then aggregated across views to produce consistent 3D hypotheses for parts. We solve correspondences across views for mirror symmetric parts by introducing a latent variable. We evaluate our part detectors qualitatively and quantitatively on a dataset gathered from a professional football game.