This is about me and the ideas behind this site :
My name is Liz, I am the Admin for this site – I have had previous experience in building web sites which was very good but, some time ago, I changed direction and did something else which turned out not as interesting as it first appeared. However, a year or so ago I found I had time on my hands and decided to start a blog site using WordPress. The site was good but needed direction – and began looking for a topic of interest.
I had heard about Neural Networks some time ago but they seemed to fade in the background to be replaced by expert systems. However over the past years they have made a big resurgence, especially with the increases in computer power and available cheap memory.
The Rise of the Poker Bot’s
I am also interested in Games – mainly poker. I have a profile on many sites. If you want to lose a game – just tell me … However there is an Urban Myth going round the tables that a ‘ Big Data ‘ company has unleashed machine learning ‘Poker Bots’ onto the poker sites so that when players lose consistently, they blame their loss on the ‘polka dots’!! Imagine; if you had a machine learning ‘poker bot’ taking all the money from the pockets of the ‘Humans’ Oh, wouldn’t that be an awful thing to do – so unfair – Bishop why you smile that way ?Anyway Neural Nets – let us have a look.
Neural Nets are now much in the news, especially with the advent of Automated driver-less cars. Which, well, didn’t go too great when it ran over someone. And the news that a big software company is going to replace all its news team with Automated News Robots – that should be quite hilarious too.
The stock market – the market the world uses to produce Capitol – Stocks, shares and futures were digitized a while ago and now they are run on Algorithms – many of them ‘learning algorithms’ – ( you can even open up a broker account and download the algorithm yourself ) – So, when the algorithm sees a buying opportunity it will buy automatically, and you can sit back and watch your money pile up and when the algorithm sees a dip it sells – and automatically saves your Dosh – Perfect.
Unfortunately, the situation is; there are only a few company’s that make the algorithm. So the markets are all using the same algorithms. This means that when they all see a buying opportunity, they all buy . That’s great, the stock markets all go up… but conversely when they all see a dip – they all sell and produce an avalanche – a crash – Oh dear. [ Don’t panic, they have circuit breakers that pull the plug on the Robots now. ]
So, in effect, the Internet has now got too big to be run ( or Policed ) by ‘Humans’. It has to be left up to the Big Data Sifting Neural Networks to sort the ‘Humans’ out. Just quite how that will pan out is anyone’s guess. Gender Profiling, Social Profiling, Political Profiling, Social-Economic Profiling – All initially for the Big “FANG”s advertising revenue – Remember – with a change in Governance – This can easily change to something more insidious. ‘They’ will know who you are, what you are and where you are and – what you got : Scary…
However we can’t leave this on such a pessimistic note; Neural Networks have their advantages too:
Pax Machina
Machine Learning has provided us with the ‘Smart Speaker’ which has in built speech recognition. So, instead of you having to get up and put on your favorite Album on yourself – It can play it to you – just by asking for it. It can turn lights on and off without you having to get out of your chair . It can play the movies that you like by learning your preferences. ‘ No, Skari – not THAT movie right now – we have company, remember… ‘
Speech synthesis is there to help people who have difficulty speaking – Speech recognition can help people type letters without typing – I could do with one of those. It can also help by processing speech and printing it onto a screen for people who are hard of hearing.
Fingerprint and facial recognition can unlock your smart phone – especially when most of us keep a lot of personal data in the phone. This way no one else can access your private data. – even when you loose your phone.
The on-line Algorithms present you with choices based on your past preferences so that all your internet browsing is personalized to your tastes. And shopping is now so easy you just click on a ‘re-buy’ button and it comes to your door. Possibly delivered by a drone that has a location application inside.
There is also a big boom in computer gaming [ Currently the industrial turnover is estimated to be worth over $50 Billion ] – just think of the advantages to the games industry if, instead of just a programmed strategy , the games utilized more computer – machine learning in their game-play… that would be some game and a good source of individual income too.
The Soft Machine – The Cultivation of A.I.
Now, while I have been investigating this topic – I have come across a movement I did not quite anticipate. I thought that machine Learning, Neural Networks and A.I. would be mainly populated by Male Influences : hence Deus est Machina: – which it is: However I was pleasantly surprised to find that there is a growing movement amongst woman’s groups that wished to be included within the data science A.I. community. This is good: There needs to be a balance between the masculine Phallus Dei and the Feminine Way. If A.I. is to be the projection of the Male Ego – Mind made In the image of Man – then this needs to be fed, nurtured and cultivated by the Pink Evolution. It is the way.
So there we have it, we have looked at some of the advantages and disadvantages of Machine learning. As Machine Intelligence improves there will undoubtedly be more things to report but here I will stop for now .
I will now leave Bishop to say a bit but, it will be edited heavily:
In Variant B
Variant B – compile – compute – no profile…
Right that’s enough – that’s all which was printable and NO -I am not going through Godels incompleteness theorem and its effects on machine logic – no.. So to end all this we are going to look at Neural Networks, what they are and what they do. What machine learning is and what it can do – at least if we know what we are dealing with then we may stand a small chance of surviving more than 20 more minutes into the future. So I together with Variant B [ We ] are embarking on a blog about Neural Networking and here it is;
So if you want to continue – You can Click Here or click on the ‘Neural Networks’ menu tab above and you can see an example of ‘Machine Learning’ in action… Yes, even on WordPress…
Acknowldgments:
* The GIFs on this page are hosted by https://giphy.com/
The ‘Soft Machine’ borrowed from the title of a book by William S. Burroughs.