Letters
Learning for Humans, Learning for Machines
I’ve been trying to teach my toddler the alphabet. Despite having some educational experience, when she mispronounces a vowel for the nth time, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing it wrong.
Analytics DeepLearning.AI
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Students Protest AI-Predicted Exam Scores, Autonomous Fighter Jet Outguns Humans, Computer Vision Sees Race
I’ve been trying to teach my toddler the alphabet. Despite having some educational experience, when she mispronounces a vowel for the nth time, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing it wrong.
Machine Learning Research
Same Job, Different Scenery: A reinforcement learning technique for visual changes
People who take driving lessons during daytime don’t need instruction in driving at night. They recognize that the difference doesn’t disturb their knowledge of how to drive. Similarly, a new reinforcement learning method manages superficial variations in the environment without re-training.
Science
Drones of a Feather: Caltech researchers publish work on drone swarms.
Deep learning is coordinating drones so they can flock together without colliding. Caltech researchers Soon-Jo Chung and Yisong Yue developed a pair of models that enables swarms of networked drones to navigate autonomously through cluttered environments.
Tech & Society
Deepfakes for Good: Tencent on the commercial value of deepfakes
A strategy manifesto from one of China’s biggest tech companies declares, amid familiar visions of ubiquitous AI, that deepfakes are more boon than bane.
Machine Learning Research
All Examples Are Not Equal: An algorithm for improved semi-supervised learning
Semi-supervised learning — a set of training techniques that use a small number of labeled examples and a large number of unlabeled examples — typically treats all unlabeled examples the same way. But some examples are more useful for learning than others.
Tech & Society
Near-Miss Detection: Traffic monitoring AI predicts odds of collisions.
AI is helping avert traffic accidents by assessing the risk of car crashes at specific intersections. MicroTraffic, a Canadian video analytics company, predicts the odds that accidents will occur at intersections that traditional methods overlook.
Letters
Values for the AI Community, Part 2: Readers Respond
Last week, I asked what values the AI community stands for. Thank you to everyone who replied! The email responses in aggregate ran to 55 pages of text, and I enjoyed reading all of them.
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Predicting Car Crashes, Profiting From Deepfakes, Piloting Drone Swarms, Grading Data
Last week, I asked what values the AI community stands for. Thank you to everyone who replied! The email responses in aggregate ran to 55 pages of text, and I enjoyed reading all of them.
Machine Learning Research
When Optimization is Suboptimal: How gradient descent can sometimes lead to model bias
Bias arises in machine learning when we fit an overly simple function to a more complex problem. A theoretical study shows that gradient descent itself may introduce such bias and render algorithms unable to fit data properly.
Tech & Society
Retail Surveillance Revealed: How Rite-Aid used face recognition for security
A major retailer’s AI-powered surveillance program apparently targeted poor people and minorities. Rite-Aid, a U.S.-based pharmacy chain, installed face recognition systems in many of its New York and Los Angeles stores.
Science
Birdwatching With AI: A computer vision system recognizes individual birds.
Neural networks learned to tell one bird from another, enabling scientists to study their behavior in greater detail. Researchers from universities in Europe and Africa trained eural networks to recognize individual birds with up to 90 percent accuracy.