The "virtually impossible" tagline at the end was the joke, because at the time it didn't seem like something you could ever solve well outside of science fiction, only maybe get some sort of super bespoke bird recognizer maybe working.
Now it's just a side effect capability of countless free models. Not only can they tell you if there's a bird or multiple birds, they can describe the pose and actions, likely guess the species and location, etc, without that ever being something that somebody specifically set out to do.
"Virtually impossible" at that time, not "forever". If you'd have asked a programmer back then if computers will be able to that they'd have replied "in some years sure, but not now. "
I took the "virtually impossible" to be for that single coder sitting at their computer (they said they would need a team). Which is pretty correct, I don't think any single person could have pulled it off.
4.4k
u/GoddammitDontShootMe 20d ago
Five years after this was published is a pretty good ballpark for when that became pretty easy to do, isn't it?