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from the now-let's-work-on-human-intelligence dept.
A recent Wired article tells us about the progression of the Amazon product recommendation algorithm.
Amazon helped show the world how machines can learn. As far back as the late ’90s, the company’s online retail site would track every book, CD, and movie you purchased. As time went on, it would develop a pretty good sense of what you liked, serving up product recommendations its code predicted would catch your eye.
It wasn't rocket science. It was an algorithm. But it worked. And in the years since, the field of so-called machine learning has evolved in enormous ways, with the likes of Google, Facebook, and Microsoft training enormous networks of machines to identify faces in photos, recognize the spoken word, and instantly translate conversations from one language to another.
On Thursday, Amazon unveiled a similar machine learning service, pitching it as a way for any business to use the AI tech the company has spent years developing inside its own operation. Known as the Amazon Machine Learning Service, it’s designed for software developers “with no experience in machine learning,” AWS head Andy Jassy said on stage at a mini-conference in San Francisco.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 11 2015, @03:59PM
Michael Jackson, Ho Chi Minh, The Tooth Fairy, William Jefferson Clinton and Cindy Crawford.
(I actually know Cindy Crawford - but not _that_ Cindy Crawford.)
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Saturday April 11 2015, @04:03PM
The general public is starting to clue in to that there are such things as "Algorithms" however most folks don't really understand what they are. I myself have never been able to come up with a better explanation than "an Algorithm is a general method of accomplishing a task on a computer", although, strictly speaking a computer is not required.
Someone is proposing to audit algorithms for various kinds of illegal bias such as sexism and racism. For example I have quite a whitebread name and an impressive resume, so I get lots of inquiries from recruiters. Suppose you replaced my name - and only my name - on my resume with a name that was stereotypically African-American, Hispanic or female then posted it on all the job boards. How many inquiries would you get?
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]