Google launches Teachable Machine to give humans lessons in AI

Furthering its market position in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning, Google has launched Teachable Machine to educate users of the current abilities and limitations of AI.

Made in collaboration with Støj, Use All Five and Creative Lab and PAIR teams at Google, Teachable Machine is part of the "With Google" effort: educational experiences specially crafted to raise awareness through interactive interfaces.

In order to participate, prospective students must enable their webcam as a means of training the basic AI program through a series of voice commands, hands gestures or facial expressions.

According to the FAQ page on the site, students can train a neural network locally on their desktop which means that the images are not going to any server, thereby eliminating lag. This also means that none of the images are being stored on Google's servers, and are instead being stored on the preferred student device.

In order to be featured in the examples page with other students, participants must capture at least 30 images per class with the help of a button that starts and stops image capture.

After learning enough, the basic AI program will engage in a feedback loop with the student programmer, displaying output in the form of a GIF or sound effect or speech. 

The point of this exercise is to help users take part in programming an AI command, experiencing its limitations, and the grind involved with creating basic commands and responses.

Researchers at Cornell University recently ranked the IQ of Google's AI as the highest among its peers, placing up at 47.28. In second place was Baidu at 32.92 followed by Microsoft Bing's at 31.98 and Apple's Siri at 23.9.

While impressive, all the systems have a long way to go since the average six-year-old has an IQ of 55.5, according to Cornell researchers Feng Liu, Yong Shi, and Ying Liu.