deep learning, AI, artificial/real brain research leads/compendium/critical mass/singularity!

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ai-imagehi all, this post is ~1.5yr worth of related links collected mainly on a very striking new and fast-moving development/innovation in the field of AI, called deep learning [j,k]. it has been circulating as an idea a few yrs apparently but reached breakthrough status with the google image recognition network [j], which (as now widely reported) self-organized to identify high level objects such as cats. ❗ this is revolutionary, game-changing, technology-disrupting, paradigm-shifting stuff, largely pioneered by Ng.

Deep Learning techniques in particular, very connectionist, look very promising to me and seem to be well on the way to escaping from the google labs [k] into the world-at-large [uh, so maybe there is also a slight halloween angle here! 😆 ]. facebook just announced a sentiment analysis initiative based on it. theres a relatively new google+ group on deep learning already with 2.3k subscribers. yahoo just announced an acquisition of LookFlow also to establish deep learning techniques.

today I read that captcha [i] is claimed broken by a startup & see it reported in several places. its difficult to time posts but thats the tipping point for me on this subject & taking it as my cue to launch this blog post & this big link collection on the topics.

theres a big confluence of different factors aligning on AI and lots of remarkable news on the subject. obama announced a federal brain research initiative [b]. Markram [c] in europe was awarded over $1.3B by the european research consortium for work in developing a large-scale brain simulation. jeff hawkins [l] has been in the news lately also promoting an open-source type attack on the problem via his own directions. kurzweil was hired by google & has his own documentary![m10] IBM has announced various initatives also [e]. just heard that deep-pocket Paul Allen wants to get in on the action too! [a9] 😯

new book by Eliasmith, “how to build a brain” [a7] & others too.

these research projects are massively ambitous, have potentially staggering scientific, social, and business/economic implications—imagine what the next google might look like!—and are naturally compared to other Big Science type projects eg mapping the human genome or, frankly, the mother of all scientific projects, the LHC/Higgs search. but, hey, then, turning down the frothing hypemeter just a notch, of course lets also not forget the outcome of these types of projects as far as expectations versus reality, which was a particularly sizeable gap with the genome mapping in particular. on the other hand, a Nobel for the Higgs particle was just awarded weeks ago….!

and elsewhere, oh yeah, theres some borderline-fringe stuff on the so-called singularity circulating! [m] cant believe that even the conservative academics eg Moshe Vardi [m6] are getting in on the speculation.

google’s deep learning breakthrough was the original impetus for the blog post but as you can see its almost comically expanded beyond the original scope over time, but still relatively short time! that is a reflection of both my wideranging reading but also the intrinsic memetic explosion going on in the area.

so, its really invigorating to see this subject really popping/buzzing/crackling/snapping at this nanosecond after many years of studying it. who can keep track of it all? not implying that I can!

is this so-called critical mass, or what? well dont know about whether its a critical mass to *achieve* AI but it seems certainly a critical mass of new interest in doing so. may we all live in exciting/fast-moving/developing times! 😎

there are many links here organized into sections based on my own classification ideas. not saying its perfectly sorted [thats a near-impossible goal] but its hopefully somewhat convenient and understandable. hope you enjoy reading it all as much as I did collecting it! 😀

so, onward! viva la revolution! 💡

[oh yeah and when is it gonna be possible to get a good paying job working on this stuff, anyway? as the old expression goes “dont quit your day job™” 😉 ]

a. ai

b. us brain map

c. markram

d. other

e. ibm

f. mit

g. spaun

h. milestones

i. captcha

j. google vision

k. deep learning

l. hawkins

m. future/vision/singularity

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  1. Pingback: DEEP LEARNING REVOLUTION, summer 2015, state of the art & topnotch links | Turing Machine

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