The phys.org website has a new article that piqued my interest:<\/p>\n
\"96.7% recognition rate for handwritten Chinese characters using AI that mimics the human brain\" (9\/17\/15)<\/p>\n
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It begins:<\/p>\n
Fujitsu today announced the development of the world's first handwriting recognition technology by utilizing AI technology modeled on human brain processes to surpass a human equivalent recognition rate of 96.7%, that was established at a conference. Fujitsu had previously achieved top-level accuracy in this field, as demonstrated by taking first place, with a recognition rate of 94.8%, at a handwritten Chinese character recognition contest held at the International Conference on Document Analysis and Recognition (ICDAR), a top-level conference in the document image processing field.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
However, in order to further increase recognition accuracy, a new mechanism for studying the diversity of character deformations was required. Now, with a focus on a hierarchical model of expanded connections between neurons, a model based on the human brain which grasps the features of the characters, Fujitsu has developed a technology to automatically create numerous patterns of character deformation from the character's base pattern, thereby \"training\" this hierarchical neural model….<\/p>\n
Ordinarily, while humans can easily recognize media such as characters, images and sounds, for computers this recognition is much more difficult, due to both the many variations in shape, brightness and so on of the object to be recognized, as well as the existence of similar objects. This has become a central problem in artificial intelligence research. Fujitsu has decades of experience in character recognition, with commercialized technologies used in such areas as Japan's finance and insurance fields for Japanese language, as well as a Chinese character recognition technology used by the Chinese government for 800 million handwritten census forms. Fujitsu started research using artificial intelligence based on deep learning for character recognition in 2010….<\/p>\n
I have many questions:<\/p>\n
1. How does this 96.7% recognition rate for handwritten Chinese characters compare with voice recognition?<\/p>\n
2. Would it work equally well for the recognition of other types of handwriting than Chinese?<\/p>\n
3. Is the current level of recognition of any practical utility?<\/p>\n