Computer vision or machine vision?

In “It’s very clever, but is it machine vision?“ I asked if Video Synopsis qualified as machine vision. Now let me answer my own question.

I’m going to say no, it’s not machine vision, although it is undoubtedly a very clever piece of computer vision. What’s the difference? Well there’s no decision-making going on. The software appears to do a fantastic job of extracting and condensing the relevant action, but there’s no way to set it off looking for something. You can’t ask it, “when was the car window broken?” for example, or “at what time was the package left under the bench?”

Does that sound far-fetched? Perhaps, but I’m sure there’s a whole bunch of researchers working on it.