Dominic Wellington on machine learning, or, shadows in the datacenter

Episode 66 · March 11th, 2018 · 1 hr 6 mins

About this Episode

If you only followed the daily headlines, AI and machine learning seem like a magical technologies that will either solve all our problems or put everyone out of work. In reality, there’s little to know AI and machine learning, though complex, has many practical uses. While they’re often delightful, there’re not mystical. Coté discusses how to think about machine learning, how it works, and some examples of what it can do with Dominic Wellington.

Relevant links & select articles from Dominic

  • Think Outside The Black Box: “The problem is that each time, the definition of AI has been updated to exclude the recent achievement.”
  • New Paths to Helicon.
  • Replace of Augment?
  • Not Biting My Tonge: “Where things go wrong is when stodgy enterprise vendors put on their dad-jeans and go down to the skate park.”
  • Algorithmic Reality: “We can see the beginnings of this process already: we drive where the algorithms tell us to drive, we exercise the way the algorithms tell us to exercise, and we even date whom the algorithms tell us to date. We buy films, music, and books that the algorithms recommend, go on holiday where they suggest, and take jobs that they set us up with. In the future, what other decisions will we hand over to algorithms - unquestioning and unconcerned?”
  • The paperclip maximizer.

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