joshbyard:

Google’s Machine Learning Algorithms Outpacing Engineers’ Ability to Understand How they Work

“Google no longer understands how its “deep learning” decision-making computer systems have made themselves so good at recognizing things in photos.

What stunned [Google Software Engineer] Quoc V. Le is that the software has learned to pick out features in things like paper shredders that people can’t easily spot – you’ve seen one shredder, you’ve seen them all, practically. But not so for Google’s monster.

Many of Quoc’s pals had trouble identifying paper shredders when he showed them pictures of the machines, he said. The computer system has a greater success rate, and he isn’t quite sure how he could write a program to do this.

Google researchers can no longer explain exactly how the system has learned to spot certain objects, because the programming appears to think independently from its creators, and its complex cognitive processes are inscrutable. "

(via The Register ht algopop)

Didn’t they buy that robotics company? Uh oh. UH OH.