AI with AI

In the latest news, Andy and Dave discuss OpenAI releasing “Spinning Up in Deep RL,” an online educational resource; Google AI and the New York Times team up to digitize over 5 million photos and find “untold stories;” China is recruiting its brightest children to develop AI “killer bots;” and China unveils the world’s first AI news anchor; and Douglas Rain, the voice of HAL 9000 has died at age 90. In research topics, Andy and Dave discuss research from MIT, Tegmark, and Wu, that attempts to improve unsupervised machine learning by using a framework that more closely mirrors scientific thought and process. Albrecht and Stone examine the issue of autonomous agents modeling other agents, which leads to an interesting list of open problems for future research. Research from Stanford makes an empirical examination of bias and generalization in deep generative models, and Andy notes striking similarities to previously reported experiments in cognitive psychology. Other research surveys data collection for machine learning, from the perspective of the data. In blog posts of the week, the Mad Scientist Initiative reveals the results from a recent competition, which suggests themes of the impacts of AI on the future battlefield; and Piekniewski follows up his May 2018 “Is an AI Winter On Its Way?” in which he reviews cracks appearing in the AI façade, with particular focus on the arena of self-driving vehicles. And Melanie Mitchell provides some insight about AI hitting the barrier of meaning. CSIS publishes a report on the Importance of the AI Ecosystem. And another paper takes insights from the social sciences to provide insight into AI. Finally, MIT press has updated one of the major sources on Reinforcement Learning with a second edition; AI Superpowers examines the global push toward AI; the Eye of War examines how perceptual technologies have shaped the history of war; SparkCognition publishes HyperWar, a collection of essays from leaders in defense and emerging technology; Major Voke’s entire presentation on AI for C2 of Airpower is now available, and the Bionic Bug Podcast has an interview with CNA’s own Sam Bendett to talk AI and robotics.