Kevin Schofield - Tour of Microsoft Research, Part II (machine learning) | TheChannel9Team

TDude

Can a machine learn? I thought it can only be programmed. Unless it's exploited off course, so it can do something unsafe that wasn't programmed.
"I like demos", Kevin says during the fourth minute. If he means trials (that expire after some time) or beta programs (that are mostly unstable) with that, I don't really get why he loves demos.
- Nice cube at the end, though.

Shaded
Mean ugly geek with axe

TDude wrote:

Can a machine learn? I thought it can only be programmed.

Can the sound barrier be broken? Can we land on the moon? Can we colonise Mars? Can machines learn?

Just one of those things that is impossible until someone does it.

<drools while waiting for video download>

TDude

It's just weird that everyone speaks about "learning" a pc something, while it's only doing what it's programmed to do. It's not like a pc can interact with you directly, even when sometimes you think it's doing that.

Shaded wrote:
<drools while waiting for video download>

Smalband eey? Try with WMP10, you can stream it without downloading it first.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Actually, I thought that was me talking about demos. I love a good demonstration of what someone is working on.

As to whether machines can learn? Certainly not the way we learn, but they can be trained to look for patterns and present those to us in new ways to help us out.

For instance, it can watch the patterns of how I read news feeds. Look at my linkblog at http://www.scobleizer.com for instance. I read 3500 items and put only 100 items a day onto that. Could an algorithm be crafted to look for patterns that I use? How accurate could it get?

I'd love to find out.

Charles
Welcome Change

Man, I wish I could've been at that interview... Nice job, Scoble. Horvitz is amazing.

How do you learn? Does it ever involve information input followed by pattern analysis? I'd say so! There's plenty of research going on around the world in the area of AI and machine learning. People in the theoretical biology field, for example, have created some very interesting programs that actually evolve and modify their patterns of behavior based on external perturbations.

Things like automatic and "intelligent" organization of newsfeeds, blog posts and emails are interesting and challenging problems that we all will benefit from when they are sufficiently "solved". However, I'm looking forward to the day when my computer is able to heal itself, maintain itself, and yes, learn, all in a homeostatic way.

Charles

TDude

scobleizer wrote:
Actually, I thought that was me talking about demos.

Sorry, can't hear the difference on smalband Wink

scobleizer wrote:

For instance, it can watch the patterns of how I read news feeds. Look at my linkblog at http://www.scobleizer.com for instance. [...] Could an algorithm be crafted to look for patterns that I use? How accurate could it get?

I'd love to find out.

The answer is already on your website: PodCasting! (Future of Podcasting | from: Reel Reviews | MWGblog)
In three words: spoken news feeds.

scobleizer
I'm the video guy

Charles: wait until you see tomorrow's video. We meet a researcher working to cure HIV (and the folks who did a cool traffic app for the SmartPhone and the technology inside MSN's desktop search).

TDude: that might help, but won't solve the problem.

Here's one: how will the Scobleizer live on and keep working even after my death?

Immortality here we come! Have the computer learn my patterns and it can keep doing what I'm doing even if I retire or die.

MarkN

Machines can learn things just fine. Yes, the domain of knowledge is restricted, but this is due to the inherent brittleness of current programming and development paradigms, not because machine learning is inherently impossible.

I also think the assertion that "because computers are programmed, anything they can 'learn' isnt learning" is flawed argument.

The same goes for machine intelligence.

[p.s. This was a very motivating video]

ZiRo

Machines can't learn.

They can see patterns in what they do, but you have to tell it what to look for in patterns, then what to do with it.

If I had a microphone input, my form1 wouldn't start doing text to speech unless i told it i was speaking, and these words represent strings or actions, which we pickup as children.

And as children, we can't be told that they are actions, we learn. The day microsoft releases an application that can learn without being told what to learn, is the day computers learn.

Then again, Scoble seems to learn... odd..