This month Google revealed a major new approach to A.I. development that seems to call out to the most sensational and apocalyptic predictions in all of science fiction.
Called “AutoML” for “auto-machine learning,” it allows one A.I. to become the architect of another, and direct its development without the need for input from a human engineer.
On the surface, that sounds like the sort of thing that could lead to the runaway evolution of the singularity, but it’s actually Google’s bid to put the incredible power of machine learning in the hands of ordinary humans.
In essence, AutoML’s strategy of using neural networks to design other neural networks is familiar; making programs to edit the code of other programs is the definition of machine learning. What makes AutoML new is how early into the process of designing a neural net it begins to intervene; AutoML doesn’t just refine simple models that already exist, but selects those models in the first place, and then refines them on its own. In this way, AutoML is a more full-featured version of what normal “ML” was always supposed to be.
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