One of my first significant impressions of computer vision came from The Terminator when the robot was able to see and identify objects as they moved. That computer vision of the future has started to emerge, and as computers start to see things, there are far reaching implications for the property and casualty insurance industry.

How computers see

Like humans, a computer's vision implies two distinct things: identification and categorization. Humans do this unconsciously as we view the world around us; however, computers perform each task separately and quite 'consciously.' A simple example is how Facebook recognizes faces and categorizes them as your friends. A more advanced example is where a computer recognizes objects within running movies (or live video feeds) and categorizes them as "safe" or "dangerous." I recently saw computer vision used to recognize people and objects in near real-time within a video, including people running and a bag lying on the ground. Fascinating technology.

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In insurance, there are virtually countless use cases where humans need to recognize and categorize object, e.g., "Ford Focus — total loss." In that example, the object is both recognized "Ford Focus" and categorized "total loss." This kind of computer vision is already is starting to take hold and has the ability to dramatically speed claims and other insurance processing.