Why computer vision is rocking the business world -- and bottom lines

Computer vision technology is one of the more remarkable AI applications. It actually helped spark the current AI revolution in 2012, when researchers used a deep neural network to radically improve the ability to recognize and classify objects in images. Since then, neural nets have surpassed even human abilities in many areas. Companies are now investing billions of dollars in computer vision research and product development. These include security cases, like detecting human faces with startling accuracy, even from lamp-posts as they speed down the highway in their cars; to ecommerce, where retail companies can let you search for a pair of jeans your favorite celebrity was wearing -- simply by uploading an image. Computer vision's potential is suddenly clear across a broad swath of industries, making it one of the fastest-growing trends.