I tried to teach an AI to write this article, gave up, and wrote it my damn self
What a time for artificial intelligence! Google announced a new AI-powered set of products and services at its I/O conference for developers, including one called Duplex that makes phone calls for you and sounds just like a real person, which freaked everyone right out. The Trump administration held some sort of AI summit with representatives from Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft, Nvidia, and buttermaker Land O’Lakes, presumably because the White House has so much churn. Add to this the public reveal that the musician Grimes and Elon Musk are dating, after the two shared a joke about AI.
And yet when people ask what the software company I run is doing with machine learning, I say, calmly, “Nothing.” Because at some level there’s just nothing to do.
The hotness of the moment is machine learning, a subfield of AI. In machine learning you take regular old data— pictures, emails, songs—and run it all through some specialized software. That software builds up a “model.” Since the model encodes what came before, it’s predictive—you can feed the model incomplete data and it will suggest ways to complete it. A trivial example: Anyone, including you and I, can feed the alphabet to a “recurrent neural network,” or RNN. That makes a model of the alphabet. Now you execute that model (maybe by running a script) and give it the letters “ABC.” If your specially trained neural network is having a good day, it’ll say “D.”
Go up a level: Feed your neural network a million pictures with captions, then feed it a picture without a caption and ask it to fill in the missing caption. Feed it countless emails with replies, then show it one without a reply and ask it what to say.
This story is from the May 21, 2018 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Sign In
This story is from the May 21, 2018 edition of Bloomberg Businessweek.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Sign In
Instagram's Founders Say It's Time for a New Social App
The rise of AI and the fall of Twitter could create opportunities for upstarts
Running in Circles
A subscription running shoe program aims to fight footwear waste
What I Learned Working at a Hawaiien Mega-Resort
Nine wild secrets from the staff at Turtle Bay, who have to manage everyone from haughty honeymooners to go-go-dancing golfers.
How Noma Will Blossom In Kyoto
The best restaurant in the world just began its second pop-up in Japan. Here's what's cooking
The Last-Mover Problem
A startup called Sennder is trying to bring an extremely tech-resistant industry into the age of apps
Tick Tock, TikTok
The US thinks the Chinese-owned social media app is a major national security risk. TikTok is running out of ways to avoid a ban
Cleaner Clothing Dye, Made From Bacteria
A UK company produces colors with less water than conventional methods and no toxic chemicals
Pumping Heat in Hamburg
The German port city plans to store hot water underground and bring it up to heat homes in the winter
Sustainability: Calamari's Climate Edge
Squid's ability to flourish in warmer waters makes it fitting for a diet for the changing environment
New Money, New Problems
In Naples, an influx of wealthy is displacing out-of-towners lower-income workers