AI in Image Recognition

It was around late fall in 2023-24. I was in a small group of visitors to a steel mill of a major steelmaker in Japan and we were ushered towards one of the facilities in the steel-making line.

Here, the hot-rolled steel coils run through the conveyer belt were scanned with a camera for any surface defects. The factory representative explained that the defects were detected using special software developed in-house, using defect images as training data. At that time, generative AI was already starting to be a popular topic worldwide, but Japan being quite “conservative” in software, there wasn't any mention of AI (人工知能 artificial intelligence in Japanese) by that representative. (At least that what I have remembered)

“That's a neat way for defect inspection” I thought to myself, remembering that back at our factory it's done with the ol' blood-fueled retina. I wished that we someday could also build a system like that so that daily quality control tests would be more efficient.

A lot has changed in AI throughout these years that I think someone with strong motivation and skills could attempt to develop something similar from inside their bedroom. Though image recognition is not a new technology, with the advent of AI it seems like this technology will be perfected in new future, if it isn't already.

There is a lot of debate about whether this is a good thing or not (with con's usually regarding the use of facial recognition in surveillance), but for me, the future would introduce many more technology that was sci-fi to me 20 years ago, just like how space age was alien to person born at the start of the 20th century.