Seeing is Not the Same as Understanding

Dr. Fei-Fei Li often highlights a massive gap in AI: we can easily teach a computer to identify a person, a boat, and water.

But it takes incredible processing power to realize those objects combined represent a rowing team.

As humans, we don’t just "take a picture" with our eyes. We use heuristics and past experiences to interpret:

Physics: How the oars displace the water.

Intent: The intense synchronization of the athletes.

Narrative: The stakes of a high-speed race.

We often take our mental processing power for granted. But the real magic isn’t in identifying the objects, it’s in making sense of the scene.