This demo by Saqib Shaikh (a visually impaired MSFT engineer) is an incredibly compelling use case of image annotation APIs.<p>I've done work with the Braille Institute in San Diego, and access to a device like this would truly be world-changing for any of the people there.<p><a href="https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/715234653938933761" rel="nofollow">https://twitter.com/Microsoft/status/715234653938933761</a>
Something I'm starting to realize with all these AI APIs is how difficult it is to evaluate and compare the results.<p>How do you know their algorithms are better than the competition? The marketing buzzwords are all there. "Powerful algorithms", "never seen anything comparable" etc.<p>The worst part is the algorithms might work well with certain data sets but fail miserably with others.
I have a bittersweet feeling about all these APIs. On the positive side, this is something we can take and use, possibly saving ourselves tons of time on some routine tasks. On the negative side, this particular flavor of AI-as-a-service from a big company like Microsoft means that algorithms will be reduced to a black box which you don't really understand or control in any meaningful way.
Maybe this is nit-picky, but the use of "Cognitive" in the name seems odd. This service relies on applied maths (e.g., machine learning), not "cognition." I guess it was a marketing decision?
The links to the python notebooks fail.<p>Here in the emotion API, look for the link to the jupiter notebook on github
<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/emotion-api/documentation/getstartedwithpython" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/emotion-a...</a><p>Here in the vision API, same thing-jupiter notebook is 404.
<a href="https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face-api/documentation/get-started-with-face-api/getstartedwithpython" rel="nofollow">https://www.microsoft.com/cognitive-services/en-us/face-api/...</a><p>I know, real coders use C++, C#, or objC. But I need to understand something before I code it.
The APIs look good. I have used Microsoft's search API for years and have had customers also use it. I like the business model of a few free calls per day, with a relatively low cost for more API calls. Things that are 100% free make me nervous because they are probably more likely to go away in the future.
So many of these will be replicated by free open source libraries. Thus I am not sure that most these services are that defensible in terms of pricing, if there is a premium over AWS base costs.