CaptionBot fails to recognize the Apple II

At KansasFest, you’ll discover software and hardware you’re unlikely to see anywhere else — yet diehard retrocomputing enthusiasts will no doubt recognize the floppy disks and circuit boards, identifiable by their unique schematics and labels. By contrast, a modern computer is more ubiquitous and even more powerful, but it’s unlikely to be able to identify what makes the Apple II special… or even what the Apple II is.

That’s a theory I put to the test with CaptionBot, Microsoft’s online tool that accepts image uploads and attempts to describe their contents. Is it a group of people posing for a photo? Someone holding a book? CaptionBot is surprisingly good at recognizing people and their daily activities.

What it’s not so good at is recognizing hardware and software. As a test, I threw at it some photos from the Apple II Enthusiasts group on Facebook and found the results laughably terrible. So for this blog post, I more extensively trolled my KansasFest 2002–2015 photo archives to see what other guesses CaptionBot might get wrong. Here’s what it thought we see and do in Kansas City:

: True fact: When Steve Wozniak first demoed the Apple-1 at the Homebrew Computer Club, they thought he’d invented the cell phone.

: In Hawaii, everyone walks around in bath towels.

: That’s a very precise, if incorrect, guess. Did we ever actually see Ryan play Nintendo Wii?

: A naughty, naughty boy.

: James Littlejohn’s LittleTennis.

: I don’t blame you, CaptionBot — not one bit.

: Can we really trust a computer that can’t tell the difference between a circuit board and a Jacquard loom print?

: That’s… pretty good, actually.

: I’d rather get drunk WITH Ryan than ON Ryan.

: A bicycle… FOR YOUR MIND

: A horse is a horse, of course, of course… except when it’s a bull.

: The truck that it took to get all these Apples to KansasFest should not be identifiable here.

: Oh, Veronica. You should punch CaptionBot’s lights out for this one.

: Juiced.GS pizza: Is it a cake? Or is it a book? And how do magnets work??

: Delicious Structris Cake. Virtually zero preservatives.

: … Or maybe, just MAYBE, it’s a space station map??

Computers may be able to defeat humans at chess — but we’re still one up on visual recognition. Let’s see what we can capture at KansasFest 2016 to stymy Microsoft’s latest attempt to bring about the singularity.

(Hat tip to Andy Hartup at GamesRadar+ for the inspiration!)

Apple II Bits