Google’s Teachable Machine is a Simple and Fun Way to Understand How Machine Learning Works

Artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, neural networks… are all words we hear more and more today, as machines get the ability to recognize objects, answer voice requests / commands, and so on. But many people may not know at all the basics of how machine learning works, and with that in mind, Google launched Teachable Machine website to let people experiment and understand the basics behind machine learning without having to install an SDK or even code.

So I quickly tried it with Google Chrome, as it did not seem to work with Mozilla Firefox. It’s best to have audio on, as a voice explains how to use it.

Basically you connect your webcam, authorize Chrome too use it, and you should see the image in the input section on the left. After you’re being to train the machine in the learning section in the middle with three difference classes. You’ll be asked to wave your hand and keep pressing on the “Train Green” button until you have at least 100 examples. At this stage, the machine will always detect the green class since it’s all that it knows. Then you can train the Purple class by staying still, and again make sure you have at least 100 examples before you release the button. Now the machine should be able to detect when you stay still or move with a varying percentage of confidence. The output section will just show some animated GIFs, or play sound or words depending on what it detects.  It can learn actions (still, wave hands, clap hands) and object detections. My webcam is pretty bad, but if you have a good image, you should be able to also detect feelings like happiness, sadness, anger, anxiousness, etc… Give it a try it’s fun.

The Teacheable Machine has been built with a new open source hardware-accelerated JavaScript library called deeplearn.js,and Google released the source code for the website too.

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4 Comments
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Drone
Drone
7 years ago

“So I quickly tried it with Google Chrome, as it did not seem to work with Mozilla Firefox.”

Worked OK for me in Firefox 56.0 on Linux Mint Cinnamon (Mint Cinnamon is Ubuntu-based but with a desktop that is NOT trying to be a smartphone).

Martin Schlatter
Martin Schlatter
7 years ago

PS: there is an error in the RSS feed url: http://fusion.google.com/add?feedurl=http://https://www.cnx-software.com/feed
One “http” to much.

Amit Jain
Amit Jain
7 years ago

Tried in chrome, works great. Its a quite a valuable resource to understand how training should be done, which is core to any Machine Learning project.

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