Computer Vision News - August 2018

companies that are doing cutting-edge things. If I am a serious guy who thinks I can make some money, I would go to a startup which is well-funded and has been able to get some traction. If I’m more ambitious, I have a Ph.D., and my research is really good, I would find a space in the local accelerators or incubators. Eventually, I’d spend six months courting my problem, getting that validated, and then I’d try to get some funding. It has been really easy to get funded, especially if you have a good background. Facebook or Apple have been some of the key players in this market. Facebook has been one of the leading researchers as far as computer vision is concerned. They’re investing heavily in computer vision and AI. They are one of the prominent players. What about Apple? Ah, Apple! [ laughs ] Nobody knows what they are doing! [ both laugh ] Here, in Silicon Valley, you bump into Apple engineers all the time, but when you ask, “ Hey, what do you do at Apple? ” They shake their heads and say, “ I was sworn to secrecy. I cannot tell you what I am doing. ” What’s your guess? Well, I can give you a general overview of what they’ve announced that they are doing. Apple is leading the research on the edge. The have recently announced a face recognition kit. I think that could really allow for a mass deployment of computer vision applications for mobile phones. I don’t see a lot of computer vision applications just yet on mobile devices, but it’s just a matter of time. Apple is now leading that effort by giving you the SDK for facial recognition. I’m pretty sure they have a chip coming up that will be in the next iPhone, that will let you do more interesting things with computer vision. Let’s go back to the game that we started before. If you are just finishing your PhD and you’re entering the active life, what opportunities should you pay attention to? There was a famous quote... “ There are, maybe, 700 people on this planet who can actually create meaningful AI, computer vision, or deep learning algorithms. There are another 70,000 who can understand it, who can code, and do things with it. That is going to impact the 7 billion people on the planet. ” If you do a quick search on Indeed or any of the big job sites, you will get a number of hits on machine learning, AI, or computer vision. Clearly, there is a huge demand for different kinds of applications out there today. If you’re looking for stability and career growth, I would focus on cloud today because there is good traction in the market for cloud-based applications. There is a demand established for using the cloud. There are many interesting applications developed in the cloud. If you are a little bit more ambitious, edge is what I would look at, enabling robots to see and security cameras to identify. You can actually do all kinds of things, but keep in mind that if you are doing stuff on the edge, it might take some time. If you establish your own niche and you are one of the few, you can probably command a higher salary for that. There are very few people who can actually do coding in C++ or OpenCL for embedded vision applications. 30 Computer Vision News Guest Guest