On the machine learning curve

There was an article in the New York Times today I thought I might mention. "Taking Baby Steps toward Software that Reasons like Humana" (below) by John Markoff is a an articulate look at what I call machine learning. .

The story considers what is going on these days as a re-vitalization of artificial intelligence, which bloomed in the 1980s and then faded from headlines, and I agree. I think the story conveys, in a way, that there are some similarities.

The story looks doesn’t use the term 'machine learning' – tho it does mention pattern recognition (somewhat synonymous), deep learning and deep neural nets  .. which are fairly similar. What I think that emphasizes is that today's 'machine learning' is basically a new take on neural networks.

And as such machine learning faces hurdles -because flaws that stymied AI, still remain to be addressed. As Markoff writes "generalized systems that approach human levels of understanding and reasoning have not been developed."

What he doesn’t say is that the people that sell these things today tend to gloss over that, same as their counterparts 'back in the day.' That is not to criticize this particular work, which necessarily has a limited objective.

The story doesn’t use the term 'cognitive computing' either. But it talks about things – Q&A systems, natural speech processing - that combine with 'deep learning' to create cognitive computing.


Taking Baby Steps Toward Software That Reasons Like Humans

By JOHN MARKOFF MARCH 6, 2016 

Richard Socher appeared nervous as he waited for his artificial intelligence program to answer a simple question: “Is the tennis player wearing a cap?” The word “processing” lingered on his laptop’s display for what felt like an eternity. Then the program offered the answer a human might have given instantly: “Yes.” ....