Programmer tries to explain binary search to the police

The Picard Maneuver@startrek.website to Programmer Humor@programming.dev – 2513 points –
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Anything undetectable by humans would still be useless to AIs. A bit a smoke? Could have been a gunshot 3 minutes ago, could have been a cigarette, could be fog, could be a vape.

Actually, an AI could determine the difference between those, based on shape, location, and opacity, etc.

At that point, just feed the entire video to the AI and have it tell you when it sees guns or puffs of smoke or hears screams.

Is there a point where one technique works better than another technique? Sure. I'm not arguing that. But if you're dealing with a very long time, you'd still want to do a binary search first.

Binary search is useless when you can just have a machine watch the entire video in one sitting over the course of five seconds and tell you when the interesting thing happens.

Depends on how long that tape is, which is what was being originally discussed by the OP.

A binary search assisted by AI in determining the point in the tape where the effect happened quickly is still a very fast way of doing so (assuming the tape duration is very long), as alluded by others in other topic trees in this topic.

Actually, an AI could determine the difference between those, based on shape, location, and opacity, etc.

Lmao now I know you're fucking with me

Yeah lemme spend three weeks training this AI on the difference between gunsmoke, cigarette smoke, vapes, and fog in this specific alley. Oh, y'all already found the killer because someone just watched the video? Well my point stands, the AI could do it faster

Once it's trained

In another week

Oh shit, it thought that guy's cell phone was a gun. See you in another month!

Actually, an AI could determine the difference between those, based on shape, location, and opacity, etc.

Lmao now I know you’re fucking with me

Yeah lemme spend three weeks training this AI on the difference between gunsmoke, cigarette smoke, vapes, and fog in this specific alley. Oh, y’all already found the killer because someone just watched the video? Well my point stands, the AI could do it faster

Once it’s trained

In another week

Oh shit, it thought that guy’s cell phone was a gun. See you in another month!

Um, I was being completely serious. Having AI determine shapes/opaqueness is a simple matter for it. And I'm assuming the training would already be done before the event happens, over time.

You don't think crime forensics labs won't be training AI to do these kind of detections going forward? Really?

(Maybe its a matter of people not truly grocking what AI will do and how it will change things, going forward. /shrug)

Having an AI search for shapes an opaqueness is still totally useless for a binary search if those semi-opaque shapes happen for 10 minutes 34 minutes into an hour long video

Again, you'd just feed the whole video to an AI, you wouldn't have it do a binary search

Having an AI search for shapes an opaqueness is still totally useless for a binary search if those semi-opaque shapes happen for 10 minutes 34 minutes into an hour long video

Well one of those shapes would happen at the time of the event though, so it's not useless. One of those would be a gunshot smoke, and could be flagged for review.

Again, you’d just feed the whole video to an AI, you wouldn’t have it do a binary search

One day, when computers and AI are powerful enough, this will be the answer, but even then I would like to think behind the scenes they would use a binary search to speed up the processing time.

The time of the event doesn't necessarily coincide with any of the times that you're checking. That's the whole point of looking for visual cues. Again, if the event happens 34 minutes into the video, and it leaves AI detectable visual cues for 10 minutes, the AI will never find it using binary search. It will skip to 30 minutes, see nothing, skip to 45 minutes, see nothing, skip to 52:30, see nothing, skip to 56:15, see nothing, and fail at some point when it can't divide the video further. Binary search would fail in this scenario. It's not just useless, it's an abject failure, and the AI was a waste of processing power when you could have scrubbed forward five minutes at a time instead. That would have found the visual cue, but would not be a binary search.

The time of the event doesn’t necessarily coincide with any of the times that you’re checking. That’s the whole point of looking for visual cues.

But one of them potentially will though. A gun firing leave smoke behind.

Even if there's other smoke in the video, you're looking at 5 minutes of a 24-hour video, and not scanning through 24 hours of a video manually. And an AI could use a binary search to find any moments of smoke (or not). Not saying it's a one-size-fits-all solution, just one very important tool in a toolbox.

I don't mean to be rude, but I'm exhausted talking about this topic, and so if you don't mind, I'm just going to bail at this point.

Thanks for keeping it civil.

If we're talking about a 24 hour video, then we definitely can't find every instance of smoke. If there isn't any smoke exactly 12 hours into the video, then it throws away the entire first 12 hours. Any evidence that could have been found in those 12 hours is gone. A binary search throws away half of the information at a time. It super can't locate multiple instances of something happening.

I've been wrong in arguments before, it feels awful. The best things to do are either address the misunderstanding in the original comment, or not engage with anyone else who feels like arguing more. One thing I miss from Reddit was being able to toggle notifications on a per-comment basis.

I’ve been wrong in arguments before, it feels awful. The best things to do are either address the misunderstanding in the original comment, or not engage with anyone else who feels like arguing more.

Well, I'm not wrong, so I don't worry awful it from that angle. Just feel that people are not arguing/conversing in good faith.

The misunderstanding of others assuming differently than I was discussed elsewhere in the comment thread. To reiterate, I believe my assumptiion is the correct one based on how the world is, and not hypotheticals.

As far as not arguing more, it gets to a point of where some moderation should be happening, because its pretty evident at some people that people are group thinking attacking someone just for the lols if nothing else, and I say that because when I explain why I don't think I'm wrong they don't answer my point, but instead just insert their own new points in the conversation.

Otherwise, I feel the need to defend myself, especially when people say I'm saying things I'm not saying. "Standing up to bullies" sort of attitude. It sucks, but Humanity can be assholes sometimes.

I'd really like to stop talking about this now, I'd appreciate you not responding to this comment, unless you really feel the need to. Take care.