In the News
Is this the first computational imagination?
A team at the University of Tokyo has come up with an impressive algorithm that creates an image from a given set of words. Is this the start of computer imagination?
Have a look at this paper for more details.
Stephen Wolfram on work, intelligence and life
In this interview, Stephen Wolfram, creator of Wolfram Alpha and the recently announced Image Identification Project offers a rare inside view of his life, daily routines and work.
How special operators are taking Artificial Intelligence to war
Data and machine learning will steer missions and predict uprisings before they start.
Virtual eyes train Deep Learning algorithm to recognize gaze direction
Gaze estimation is a common Machine Learning challenge. A team at the University of Cambridge has come up with an approach using a computer to train another one.
Also in the news this week
- Facebook opens a new AI research lab in Paris
- Salesforce acquires Tempo, a smart calendar app that uses machine learning to make scheduling easier
- Baidu apologizes for having used unfair methods to beat Google and Microsoft at the ImageNet challenge
- China unveils first facial recognition ATM machine
- YC alumni Atomwise raises $6M to use Deep Learning to identify drug candidates
- Private company Sentient claims to have developed an AI supercomputer by leveraging idle machines. This system is supposed to rival systems built by Google.
Artificial Intelligence Weekly
Featured
Google I/O conference
Google held its annual developer conference Google I/O a few days ago, where it announced a slew of products and services, many of which based on Machine Learning.
The main are:
- Google Now on Tap: hold your finger on the home button to bring up contextual information relevant to the app you are currently viewing. More on this smart assistant
- Improved speech recognition with an error rate at 8%, down from 23% in 2013
- Google Photos with improved auto-sorting and classification of photos. More
All those announcements led to some claiming that Google's Machine Learning is "miles" ahead of Apple.
Google uses AI to count calories in food photos
An other project led by Google and using Deep Learning. This one's not ready for public use yet but is an interesting approach that may one day impact our diets.
Learning
Free ebook - A Course in Machine Learning
This free ebook contains introductory material to machine learning (supervised learning, unsupervised learning, large margin methods, probabilistic modeling, learning theory, etc.). It's focus is on broad applications with a rigorous backbone.
Visual search at Pinterest
Paper detailing Pinterest's work on deep learning frameworks to understand and monetize the content of pinned photos.
How to evaluate Machine Learning models - Hyperparameter tuning
In Machine Learning, Hyperparameters (such as learning rates, regularization terms...) are important to determine the capacity of a model that will be trained. Proper choice of hyperparameters is therefore crucial, this articles tells you how to proceed. Highly recommended
Using Amazon Machine Learning to predict the weather
Interesting test using Amazon's new Machine Learning service to see if and how weather predictions could be predicted.
How a machine learned to spot depression
"Contrary to popular belief, depressed people smile as many times as non-depressed people". But you can still spot depression from facial pictures, here is how the problem has been approached.
Software tools & code
OpenDeep
General purpose commercial and research grade deep learning library for Python built from the ground up in Theano.
Aerosolve by Airbnb
Machine learning library designed by Airbnb to be "human friendly". This library has been published as open source just a few hours ago.
Hardware
Neuromorphic hardware – a path towards human-level artificial intelligence
IBM, Intel, Nvidia and many more are currently developing so-called neuromorphic hardware. This article is an interesting introduction to the topic.
A Full Hardware Guide to Deep Learning
If you consider using Deep Learning at some point, have a look at this guide. Interesting information to help you choose between GPUs, CPU specs, RAM size and more.
Brains & Neurons
Into the Brain, into the Mind
Fascinating description of experiments led over the past few decades to understand the human mind, by interacting directly with the brain through electrodes and other stimuli.
Researchers reactivate lost memories with optogenetics
Researchers have long wondered whether amnesia is caused by damage to specific brain cells, meaning a memory cannot be restored, or if it is the access to that memory that is impaired. The results presented here suggest it is the access that is somehow blocked, and that specific stimulations could restore that access.
Some thoughts
Machine Learning makes surprisingly tasty salads
Fun algorithm designed to create tasty salad recipes. In a blind test, the recipes were deemed nearly as good as human-generated ones, and were deemed far more novel.
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