ImageNet: Past, Present, and Future

Since its release in 2010, ImageNet has played an instrumental role in the development of deep learning architectures for computer vision, enabling neural networks to greatly outperform hand-crafted visual representations. ImageNet also quickly became the go-to benchmark for model architectures and training techniques which eventually reach far beyond image classification. Today’s models are getting close to “solving” the benchmark. Models trained on ImageNet have been used as strong initialization for numerous downstream tasks. The ImageNet dataset has even been used for tasks going way beyond its initial purpose of training classification model. It has been leveraged and reinvented for tasks such as few-shot learning, self-supervised learning and semi-supervised learning. Interesting re-creation of the ImageNet benchmark enables the evaluation of novel challenges like robustness, bias, or concept generalization. More accurate labels have been provided. About 10 years later, ImageNet symbolizes a decade of staggering advances in computer vision, deep learning, and artificial intelligence.

We believe now is a good time to discuss what’s next: Did we solve ImageNet? What are the main lessons learnt thanks to this benchmark? What should the next generation of ImageNet-like benchmarks encompass? Is language supervision a promising alternative? How can we reflect on the diverse requirements for good datasets and models, such as fairness, privacy, security, generalization, scale, and efficiency?