Humans often end up creating things better than them and big data is probably the latest thing to have that status. Such has been the impact of this new technology that it has ended up being better image analyzer than the best human being and scientists are already excited to make the most of this new potential.
Truly, this is somewhat futuristic since image analysis has been one of the major concerns of all technology enterprises as it is one of the most difficult processes out there. Moreover, human brain thinks very fast while recognizing images as it can do away with unnecessary information quicker than a flash. However, for a computer, that process used to take time.
The paradigm shift in big data
Over the recent past, big data has grown like anything and it can now tackle unimaginable amount of data every second which allows one to do things that would have been the stuff of dreams five years ago. Advanced computing has now opened a possibility to challenge human brain in terms of processing power and it is precisely reflected in image analysis.
Researchers attribute it to the specific non-human attribute of computer: Boredom. Researchers agree that boredom is one of the prime factors that do not allow humans to browse through images continuously while computers can function with thousands of near-identical images without getting slow or tired. Hence, computers can spot the tinniest difference while you cannot despite effectively having better brain.
The possible repercussions
Of course, the immediate social and commercial benefits are evident from the beginning. It can process large volumes of images- both still and video, continuously in an extremely fast manner. However, for that, you need a proper combination of excellent hardware, fast algorithms and smooth software that will render the analysis.
Enterprises are quite convinced that the need for such technology will increase in the coming days and hence, will become prevalent across the various big data fields. Hence, this is possibly a start towards that dream when big data will let human brain rest and process everything. In fact, even image analysis can be used in many a fields such as seabed surveys, healthcare, environmental monitoring.
Big data to do more
It is also important to understand it is not a simple process as decision making where big data has reached a plug-n-play situation with everyone taking advantage of big data for various causes. Rather, it is still at a beta level where it can be further developed to ensure better performance in many fields such as children’s education.
So, computers will learn what children can answer to a certain input signal and then show the correlation to the original answer. The system, however, needs to understand the patterns thoroughly before one can invest into education through big data. Data scientists point out that this is precisely the kind of process that has helped smile recognition technology to develop in front cameras of mobile phones.
Revolutionizing medical processes
Psychiatrists, for example, have to undergo thousands of videos and images everyday to understand changes in their patients’ activities. If they use image analysis, not only does the process become faster but also help them develop their analysis quickly with much more accuracy than ever before. In fact, stretching this a bit further, traffic congestion can be understood using simple webcams and then one can easily tell the nature of distribution of traffic. Decision making, albeit of a different level, seems to be at the heart of all big data solutions. Data scientists are theorizing about new fields of access already; one has to see to what extent they materialize.
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