Letters
How to Build Deep Expertise
Did you ever spend days obsessing over a technical problem? If so, I applaud you. Determined pursuit of solutions to hard problems is an important step toward building deep expertise.
Latest
The Batch Newsletter
The Batch: Autonomous Air Freight, U.S. National AI Centers, Photorealistic Fantasy Tennis, Transformers Transform into RNNs
Did you ever spend days obsessing over a technical problem? If so, I applaud you. Determined pursuit of solutions to hard problems is an important step toward building deep expertise.
Machine Learning Research
Experience Counts: Research proposes an upgrade to experience replay.
If the world changes every second and you take a picture every 10 seconds, you won’t have enough pictures to observe the changes clearly, and storing a series of pictures won’t help. On the other hand, if you take a picture every tenth of a second, then storing a history will help model the world.
Business
Race Recognition: Face recognition companies identify people by race.
Marketers are using computer vision to parse customers by skin color and other perceived racial characteristics. A number of companies are pitching race classification as a way for businesses to understand the buying habits of different groups.
Tech & Society
AI Versus Ace: An AI fighter pilot beat a human ace in a virtual dogfight.
An autonomous fighter pilot shot down a human aerial ace in virtual combat. Built by defense contractor Heron Systems, the system also defeated automated rivals from seven other companies to win the AlphaDogfight trial.
Tech & Society
AI Grading Doesn’t Make the Grade: The UK canceled its plan for AI-generated grading.
The UK government abandoned a plan to use machine learning to assess students for higher education. The UK Department of Education discarded grades generated by an algorithm designed to predict performance on the annual Advanced Level qualifications, which had been canceled due to the pandemic.
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.
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.