Jack Clark:
Google no longer understands how its “deep learning” decision-making computer systems have made themselves so good at recognizing things in photos.
This means the internet giant may need fewer experts in future as it can instead rely on its semi-autonomous, semi-smart machines to solve problems all on their own.
The claims were made at the Machine Learning Conference in San Francisco on Friday by Google software engineer Quoc V. Le in a talk in which he outlined some of the ways the content-slurper is putting “deep learning” systems to work.
“Deep learning” involves large clusters of computers ingesting and automatically classifying data, such as pictures. Google uses the technology for services like Android voice-controlled search, image recognition, and Google translate, among others.
The ad-slinger’s deep learning experiments caused a stir in June 2012 when a front-page New York Times article revealed that after Google fed its “DistBelief” technology with millions of YouTube videos, the software had learned to recognize the key features of cats.
A feline detector may sound trivial, but it’s the sort of digital brain-power needed to identify house numbers for Street View photos, individual faces on websites, or, say,
if Google ever needs to identify rebel human forces creeping through the smoking ruins of a bombed-out Silicon Valley .Google’s deep-learning tech works in a hierarchical way, so the bottom-most layer of the neural network can detect changes in color in an image’s pixels, and then the layer above may be able to use that to recognize certain types of edges. After adding successive analysis layers, different branches of the system can develop detection methods for faces, rocking chairs, computers, and so on.
What stunned Quoc V. Le is that the machine has learned to pick out features in things like paper shredders that people can’t easily spot – you’ve seen one shredder, you’ve seen them all, practically. But not so for Google’s monster.
Learning “how to engineer features to recognize that that’s a shredder – that’s very complicated,” he explained. “I spent a lot of thoughts on it and couldn’t do it.”
Many of Quoc’s pals had trouble identifying paper shredders when he showed them pictures of the machines, he said. The computer system has a greater success rate, and he isn’t quite sure how he could write program to do this.
At this point in the presentation another Googler who was sitting next to our humble El Reg hack burst out laughing, gasping: “Wow.”
“We had to rely on data to engineer the features for us, rather than engineer the features ourselves,” Quoc explained.
This means that for some things, Google researchers can no longer explain exactly how the system has learned to spot certain objects, because the programming appears to think independently from its creators, and its complex cognitive processes are inscrutable. This “thinking” is within an extremely narrow remit, but it is demonstrably effective and independently verifiable.
Chess had been a game of kings for centuries.
Then the kids at Cal Tech taught a Kray computer how to move the pieces and that the goal was to checkmate the king.
All bets were off just a few years later.
The best chess player (human) on earth (Kasparov) was beaten soundly by a chess computer program in a series of games.
He quit.
Chess has become an ugly set of moves that work without any beauty.
Chess has become ugly even between today’s human experts who have adapted their strategies from computers.
This story from Google neither surprises me nor evokes any emotion from me.
It is another case of how our young people are not learning how to THINK.
They are being herded into the shoot that rewards them for merely being able to find some answer, any answer, as opposed to thinking out a new answer.
New knowledge will be coming only from approved sources soon.
Our next generation won’t know how to add to our knowledge at all.
this GOOGLE FACTOR, is telling me that maybe they have cross the bounderies of
control over the machine, it remind me of the movie ,where an astraunot is at the end totaly control by his
computer who have decide to stay in space and refuse to start the return to EARTH,
AND EVEN AFTER HE WAS DISCONNECTED IS STILL IN CHARGE OF THE SPACE SHIP,
AND ON ANOTHER INSTANCE, it also remind me of the WALLSTREET EXCHANGES, USING ALGORITMS
TO DO TASKS OF MULTIPLE ACTIONS IN A NANO TIMING,
AND HOW ABOUT THE BOOK GIANT WHICH HAD HIS ALGORITMS CHANGE THE PRICE OF THE BOOK NAMED THE FLYE, THEY ALGORITMS DID IT BY THEMSELVES WITHOUT ANY HUMAN DIRECTION,
OR INFLUENCE WHATSO EVER,
is that a possible way to find that they are developping a mind of their own while no emotions are notice
to be part of their decisions, which become a danger for human if they decide at one instance that we human are in their way, and preventing them to advance in their brain power pursue of more,
more of what would a machine without emotion would want,
that’s when it become scary for their handlers first and the human race after,
can we imagine an intelligent machine declaring war by her ownself, which no one would suspect is coming from her, can you believe the same machine decide to pair with an IRAN nucleor machine
so to both activate it,without any human help, only by cyber wave lenghts,
and so much more to think of, what could the machine do if made to learn to make decisions on her own.
VELY VELY INTERESTING,
I am a very ignorant computer handler,
and i am very impress by this science, since the first time i clicked on A KEYboard full of buttons which some i never touch still today for fear of getting cut of from my location,
and having to struggle for my re entry to my base.
AS IT HAPPENED BEFORE,MAKING ME FEEL LIKE A DUMMY,
BUT i ADMIRE IT TO THE MAX AND ADMIRE THOSE BIG COMPANIES LIKE GOOGLE WHICH TAKE CARE OF MY SITE,
AND STILL SEARCH FOR ADVANCING IN THE KNOWLEDGE OF THIS EXTRA ORDINARY VOYAGE TO THE IMPOSSIBLE
BY USING THE POSSIBLE ROUTE,
As soon as this connects the dots leftists don’t want people to figure out it will get shut down faster than the Avoid the Ghetto app.
1stworlder
yes , i believe you are right on,
BYE
Congratulations! Google has succeeded in creating their own version of the Hal 2000. What could go wrong?
Now that they’re working hand in hand with the Obama administration’s NSA & DHS they can start their next big project: a real-world version of Skynet.
Ditto,
yes their experts worked for OBAMA REELECTION 2012,
THEY SURELY OWN SOME OF HIS WIN, ALONG THE DEAD VOTERS AND THE MANIPULATION OF VOTES BY THE UNIONS,
why did i found it dishonest? because OBAMA HAD THE KEY OF THE PURSE,
AS OPPOSE TO MITT ROMNEY, WHO even that he paid a lot of his own money beside the people who wanted him to win, BUT THERE WAS NO MATCH FOR THE MONEY POOL WHICH OBAMA USED,
let say he bought his election from the people’s pocket , and his promisses any one he could find to win,
while the four heros where taking on an army of alquaeda all on their owns ,
knowing MILITARY are comming for them any second,
NO MAN STAY BEHIND, they did stayed behind, AND DIED BEHIND, AND VIOLENTLY,
so to save OBAMA 2012 ELECTION FIRST PRIORITY, AT ANY COST FROM THE TAXPAYERS,
LESS WE FORGET,
YES THIS SHOULD TERRIFY ALL THE AMERICANS,
@Ditto:
Terminator: Judgement Day was wrong. Skynet will become self-aware in 2014.
Aqua
HOW GOOD THOSE SELF DECIDING MACHINE WOULD BE
if used as probing the mind of a candidat to PRESIDENTCY,
they could be fine tuned so to probe the mind so to capture the defectives and weak, brain waves,
those one which make the candidat a danger for the country, because he has not enough interest in the country or not enough dedication to the people with deep roots on the ground,but is influence more by foreign cultures,so to if elect would be incline to apply the foreign agenda as oppose to pursue to the maximum the ultimate betterness of this AMERICA by following the laws of the land strickly
AS THEY WHERE INTENDED,
YES THOSE MACHINES COULD DETECT THE PROBABLE FUTURE TRAITOR,
AND DETECT THE UNWAVING TRUE CANDIDAT SOUND IN MIND AND SOLID VALUES as steel, making him or her a
president who would be worthy of the people credibility ,
and total loyalty from his MILITARY who
put their life on the lines in all the wars they are waging,