It's a Bird. It's a Mammal. It's ... Wait What?

These days Artificial Intelligence is all the rage. At least with marketing folks. Although I suppose that is a bit harsh. Although while at he same time no doubt true.

But machine learning is quite a fascinating technology. The stuff of SciFi when I was a kid (I go to stay up late on Fridays to watch The Wild Wild West and Star Trek with my Dad) I now talk the the air in my house, and lights turn on and off. 

Well sometimes. There are still to many, "I didn't hear back from your devices" replies for my liking (to be fair, this may be because of our WiFi, it's Comcastic!).

And then there are examples like this.

iNaturalist, and its sister app Seek, are clever bits of technology, with the audacious goal of allowing one to tack a picture, or sound recording, and have the app identify the species.

Recently I took part in the City Nature Challenge, where one submits as many observations a one can over an extended weekend. And I took a picture of a Bluejay on one of our platform feeders. And to its credit, the first suggestion of the iNaturalist app is Bluejay.

But that second suggestion, Eastern Chipmunk?

A bit of a head scratcher that

And I'm not sure the three gentlemen mentioned at the bottom of the screenshot really want to be associated with the set of suggestions.