Pentagon to Build Machines that Teach Themselves
What’s the Latest Development?
The experimental research wing of the Pentagon, called DARPA for short, has just undertaken a four-year project to build artificially intelligent computers that can teach themselves new and better artificial intelligence. One principal goal of the project is to overcome the steep learning curve associated with humans learning new algorithmic systems in order to teach them to machines. “Our goal is that future machine learning projects won’t require people to know everything about both the domain of interest and machine learning to build useful machine learning applications,” said Darpa program manager Kathleen Fisher.
What’s the Big Idea?
Over the next 46 months, the team of researchers will bring together experts from the computing field along with potential clients in the private sector to determine what kinds of designs are most beneficial. Already, there are a host of possible applications. “Machine learning can be used to make better systems for intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, a core military necessity. The technology can be used to make better speech-recognition applications and self-driving cars. It keeps pace with the ever-enlarging war against internet spam filling our search engines and e-mail inboxes.”
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