Researchers Made Google's Image Recognition AI Mistake a Rifle For a Helicopter

Tech giants love to tout how good their computers are at identifying what's depicted in a photograph. In 2015, deep learning algorithms designed by Google, Microsoft, and China's Baidu superseded humans at the task, at least initially. This week, Facebook announced that its facial-recognition technology is now smart enough to identify a photo of you, even if you're not tagged in it. But algorithms, unlike humans, are susceptible to a specific type of problem called an "adversarial example." These are specially designed optical illusions that fool computers into doing things like mistake a picture of a panda for one of a gibbon.