中国产人工智能程序已能看懂《泰坦尼克号》

人工智能真的不能理解人类的情感吗？为了突破这个领域，中国的一家顶尖的科技公司正在试图“教”电脑看懂上世纪90年代的经典爱情灾难片——《泰坦尼克号》。

这家中国公司的名字叫商汤科技，该公司希望它的人工智能技术能够区分电影中的恋爱场景与灾难场景。大多数人看过这部片子后，都知道它讲的是杰克和罗丝在沉船上搞对象的故事。然而对于计算机来说，要理解这种微妙的人类情感却是一件极复杂的任务。

在《麻省理工科技评论》上周一在旧金山举办的EmTech数字峰会上，这项技术的表现相当抢眼，正确地分辨出了各种场景。这充分说明了人工智能技术的进步，不过到目前为止，它要想理解其他更复杂的电影情节，还是有很长的路要走的。

会上，商汤科技与香港中文大学联合实验室主任林达华（他也是港中大的副教授）播放了电影《泰坦尼克号》的片段。片中，杰克（莱昂纳多·迪卡普里奥饰）轻轻地从身后抱住罗丝（凯特·温斯莱特饰），二人在船头摆出了经典的“我心飞翔”造型。视频下方有一张小图表，显示该公司的电脑认为这个场景是浪漫的还是刺激的。

电脑中的人工智能程序想来已经接受了数千个视频和图像的“训练”，它在分析了影片的数据后，认为这个场景是“浪漫”而非“灾难”。之后林达华又播放了泰坦尼克号沉没的片段，电脑很快确定，这个场景是“灾难”而非“浪漫”。  

随着深度学习等人工智能技术的进步，研究人员已经可以“训练”计算机分辨图片和视频中的物体。而从演示的情况看，商汤科技的AI程序已经不仅可以分辨视频中的物体，甚至可以理解视频片断的情绪和语境。据称，Netflix等美国科技公司也在攻关类似的技术，以使用AI程序解析视频，然后向观众推送最吸引他们的推广视频。

林达华并没有解释商汤科技是怎样教会计算机分辨电影场景的语境的，他只是大而化之地谈了谈公司AI技术的进展，并表示他们的技术可以用于识别人类面部表情等领域。

林达华表示，商汤科技的AI技术主要卖给了中国的“视频服务公司”，也就是那些山寨了YouTube服务的视频网站。他表示，这些企业客户想知道用户最喜欢哪类电影场景，好鼓励他们观看更多类似影片，不过他并没有解释这些企业客户打算如何实现这个目标。

有人担心，中国对人工智能的使用或许会令一些美国人产生误解。在被问到这个问题时，林达华提到了政府利用面部识别技术进行监控的问题。有些人担心，这种先进的AI监控摄像头将具有面部识别功能，从而带来隐私问题。林达华则表示，中国应用人工智能的兴趣很广泛，面部识别只是其中的“一小部分”，人工智能还可用于医疗等产业。（财富中文网）

译者：朴成奎 

One of China’s top tech companies is trying to push the frontiers of artificial intelligence by teaching computers to understand scenes from the 1990’s romance-disaster epic Titanic.

The technology, from China company SenseTime, is supposed to distinguish Titanic’sromantic scenes from disaster scenes. Although most humans would have no problem distinguishing Jack and Rose’s blooming love from the Titantic’s sinking, the feat is highly complex for computers.

In a demonstration at MIT Technology Review‘s EmTech Digital conference in San Francisco on last Monday, the technology performed well and was able to classify the scenes correctly. It highlights the advancement of artificial intelligence, but also how far it still has to go before becoming able to understand more complex movie scenes outside of public demonstrations.

Dahua Lin, the director of a joint research lab between SenseTime and the Chinese University of Hong Kong where he’s also an assistant professor, played a video of the scene from Titanic in which Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) gently holds Rose (Kate Winslet) as she leans over the bow of the doomed passenger ship like she’s flying. Beneath the video was a small chart indicating whether the company’s computers thought the scene was romantic or action-packed.

After crunching data, presumably taken from thousands of videos and image stills in video clips, the computer determined that the scene was more “romantic” than a “disaster.” Then later, when Lin briefly showed the clip of the Titanic sinking, the computers quickly identified the scene as more of a “disaster” than “romantic.”

Advances in AI technologies like deep learning have led to researchers “training” computers to understand objects in photos and videos. SenseTime’s computers, at least as demonstrated, appear to be able to understand the context behind video clips besides merely identifying the objects. U.S. tech companies like Netflix, are also reportedly exploring the use of AI in similar ways to parse videos and then show viewers promotional clips filled with scenes more likely to appeal to them.

Lin didn’t explain how SenseTime taught its computers to distinguish the context of movie scenes, but instead explained more broadly the company’s work developing AI technologies that can do things like recognize human facial expressions.

SenseTime sells its AI technology to Chinese “video services,” he said, likely referring to YouTube copycats. These corporate customers, he said, want to know which movie scenes individual users prefer in order to encourage them to watch more, although he didn’t explain how those corporate customers accomplish that.

Asked to describe possible misunderstandings Americans may have about China’s use of AI technologies, Lin cited the country’s use of facial recognition for government surveillance.Some people worry that more sophisticated surveillance cameras could recognize individual faces and create privacy problems, among other issues. But Lin minimized the potential pitfalls, saying that facial recognition is just a “small part” of China’s interest in using AI and that AI could also be used to improve industries like healthcare.