Towards Visual Semantics

TL;DR

This paper proposes a theory and algorithm to map visual perception concepts to linguistic classification concepts, enabling better integration of visual data and natural language understanding, with promising initial results.

Contribution

It introduces a novel framework for building substance concepts aligned with classification concepts, using visual objects, hierarchy, and human feedback.

Findings

Algorithm learns Genus and Differentia with reasonable accuracy

Effective with limited examples and partial supervision

Preliminary experiments show promising results

Abstract

Lexical Semantics is concerned with how words encode mental representations of the world, i.e., concepts . We call this type of concepts, classification concepts . In this paper, we focus on Visual Semantics , namely on how humans build concepts representing what they perceive visually. We call this second type of concepts, substance concepts . As shown in the paper, these two types of concepts are different and, furthermore, the mapping between them is many-to-many. In this paper we provide a theory and an algorithm for how to build substance concepts which are in a one-to-one correspondence with classifications concepts, thus paving the way to the seamless integration between natural language descriptions and visual perception. This work builds upon three main intuitions: (i) substance concepts are modeled as visual objects , namely sequences of similar frames, as perceived in multiple encounters ; (ii) substance concepts are organized into a visual subsumption hierarchy based on the notions of Genus and Differentia ; (iii) the human feedback is exploited not to name objects, but, rather, to align the hierarchy of substance concepts with that of classification concepts. The learning algorithm is implemented for the base case of a hierarchy of depth two. The experiments, though preliminary, show that the algorithm manages to acquire the notions of Genus and Differentia with reasonable accuracy, this despite seeing a small number of examples and receiving supervision on a fraction of them.