In 1966, some Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers reckoned that they could develop computer vision as a summer project, perhaps even get a few smart undergrads to complete the task.

The world has been working on the problem ever since.

Computer vision is where computers recognize objects like people do. That’s a tree. He’s Carlos. And so on. It’s one of a number of tasks we consider essential for generalized artificial intelligence, in which machines can act and reason as humans do.

While we’ve been making some considerable headway in computer vision, especially in recent years, that it has taken 50 years longer than expected shows why AI (artificial intelligence) is such as difficult and elusive goal.

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