wtfe²日本語

xkcd #1425

Tasks

by Randall MunroePublished: License: CC BY-NC 2.5

Comic: Tasks (xkcd #1425). Transcript below.

Tasks © Randall Munroe · xkcd · CC BY-NC 2.5

Hover textIn the 60s, Marvin Minsky assigned a couple of undergrads to spend the summer programming a computer to use a camera to identify objects in a scene. He figured they'd have the problem solved by the end of the summer. Half a century later, we're still working on it.

Why it lands

Two requests in one sentence: one is a database lookup, the other was an open research problem when the strip appeared in 2014. Deep learning has since made recognizing birds in photos routine, which only proves the point: the boundary moves, and it is still invisible from the outside.

Transcript

  1. WHEN A USER TAKES A PHOTO, THE APP SHOULD CHECK WHETHER THEY'RE IN A NATIONAL PARK...
  2. SURE, EASY GIS LOOKUP. GIMME A FEW HOURS.
  3. ...AND CHECK WHETHER THE PHOTO IS OF A BIRD.
  4. I'LL NEED A RESEARCH TEAM AND FIVE YEARS.
  5. IN CS, IT CAN BE HARD TO EXPLAIN THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE EASY AND THE VIRTUALLY IMPOSSIBLE.

Credits

Original
Tasks — Randall Munroe, xkcd

The English page shows the original image unmodified. The Japanese page shows an adaptation by wtfe²: the lettering was erased from the art and replaced with a Japanese translation. The adaptation is shared under the same license as the original.