Encoding Variables: Translating Your Data so the Computer Understands It

Humans and computers don't understand data in the same way, and an active area of research in AI is determining how AI "thinks" about data. For example, the recent Quanta article Where We See Shapes, AI Sees Textures discusses an inherent disconnect between how humans and computer vision AI interpret images. The article addresses the implicit assumption many people have that when AI works with an image, it interprets the contents of the image the same way people do- by identifying the shapes of the objects. However, because most AI interprets images at a pixel level, it is more intuitive for the AI to label images by texture (i.e., more pixels in an image represent an object's texture than an object's outline or border) than by shape. Another useful example of this is in language.