AI with AI

In breaking news, Andy and Dave discuss a potentially groundbreaking paper on the scalable training of artificial neural nets with adaptive sparse connectivity; MIT researchers unveil the Navion chip, only 20 square millimeters in size and consume 24 milliwatts of power, it can process real-time camera images up to 171 frames per second, and can be integrated into drones the size of a fingernail; the Chair of the Armed Services Subcommitttee on Emerging Threats and Capabilities convened a roundtable on AI with subject matter experts and industry leaders; the IEEE Standards Association and MIT Media Lab launched the Council on Extended Intelligence (CXI) to build a “new narrative” on autonomous technologies, including three pilot programs, one of which seeks to help individuals “reclaim their digital identity;” and the Foundation for Responsible Robotics, which wants to shape the responsible design and use of robotics, releases a report on Drones in the Service of Society. Then, Andy and Dave discuss IBM’s Project Debater, the follow-on to Watson that engaged in a live, public debate with humans on 18 June. IBM spent 6 years developing PD’s capabilities, with over 30 technical papers and benchmark datasets, Debater can debate nearly 100 topics. PD uses three pioneering capabilities: data-driven speech writing and delivery, listening comprehension, and the ability to model human dilemmas. Next up, OpenAI announces OpenAI Five, a team of 5 AI algorithms trained to take on a human team in the tower defense game, Dota 2; Andy and Dave discuss the reasons for the impressive achievement, including that the 5 AI networks do not communicate with each other, and that coordination and collaboration naturally emerge from their incentive structures. The system uses 256 Nvidia graphics cards and 128,000 processor cores; it has taken on (and won) a variety of human teams, but OpenAI plans to stream a match against a top Dota 2 team in late July.