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from the are-there-certified-neural-network-professionals? dept.
The simplest definition of a neural network, more properly referred to as an 'artificial' neural network (ANN), is provided by the inventor of one of the first neurocomputers, Dr. Robert Hecht-Nielsen. He defines a neural network as:
"...a computing system made up of a number of simple, highly interconnected processing elements, which process information by their dynamic state response to external inputs.
In "Neural Network Primer: Part I" by Maureen Caudill, AI Expert, Feb. 1989
ANNs are processing devices (algorithms or actual hardware) that are loosely modeled after the neuronal structure of the mamalian cerebral cortex but on much smaller scales. A large ANN might have hundreds or thousands of processor units, whereas a mamalian brain has billions of neurons with a corresponding increase in magnitude of their overall interaction and emergent behavior. Although ANN researchers are generally not concerned with whether their networks accurately resemble biological systems, some have. For example, researchers have accurately simulated the function of the retina and modeled the eye rather well.
Although the mathematics involved with neural networking is not a trivial matter, a user can rather easily gain at least an operational understanding of their structure and function.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 16 2016, @04:25PM
1. A neural net is an algorithm/system design that allows inputs to be associated with outputs through unknown hidden relationships, often surprisingly good at pattern matching tasks
2. Add more hardware.
3. ??????
4. All religions now true because you invented god.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @04:29PM
Except those religions that believe in a benign god. Muahahahaha!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Friday December 16 2016, @04:45PM
Wrong: Step 4 is always "PROFIT!"
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 5, Funny) by Uncle_Al on Friday December 16 2016, @05:13PM
Step 4: PROPHET!
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 16 2016, @07:34PM
> 4. All religions now true because you invented god.
Organized religions are based on belief. If you provide proof of God, people won't need structures to shape their belief and interaction with Her, causing all human-created religions to collapse.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday December 16 2016, @07:53PM
Considering that this was intended as a mockery of transhumanism(as it exists in e-cults obsessed with it), the exact repercussions of their beliefs coming true weren't particularly important to me.
But to address your point as an actual argument, you seriously underestimate the ability of religions to re-frame the nature of god to suit whatever the current culture tends to think and believe. People are incredibly good at holding onto ideas.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 16 2016, @08:08PM
But I'm not underestimating the ability of a Real Proven God to address the problem of those people speaking in Her name while not deserving it, while pushing contradictory and absurd self-serving instructions.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Friday December 16 2016, @08:20PM
Ah yes, the "My god will care about exactly the same trivial tribal nonsense I do and smite those unbelievers" canard, but with a nice transhumanism twist.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday December 16 2016, @08:38PM
Not quite. I was talking about the collapse of Organized religion once a proven Omnipotent God is available and giving worshiping instructions on Her Myspace page.
If you know you're selling bullshit for power and profit, or if you know that your religion doesn't line up with the latest tweet from the Omnipotent being next door, are you going to continue? Is She going to tolerate you speaking in Her name, or make it clear times have changed?
It doesn't matter if it matches my current set of beliefs. The omnipotent being gets to play with Her toys whichever way she wants.
(Score: 2, Funny) by kurenai.tsubasa on Friday December 16 2016, @08:50PM
I admit, if She ever did start existing in a provable manner and posting to MySpace, the most startling thing would be that MySpace would be relevant again!
(Score: 2) by edIII on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:01AM
Well, myspace becoming relevant again would require divine intervention.
I do love the idea though. God actually comes down here and starts getting on Twitter to set the story straight. Love to see preachers speaking against love get shutdown by a member of their congregation saying, "Well God just tweeted that you're horribly incorrect and not going where you think you are going when you die, and that he's not impressed with your Mercedes in the parking lot".
For thousands of years God has not been able to respond to any of the bullshit spoken in his/her/what's name. All religions would crash down to nothing if a God were to come down here. Instead of everyone speaking to authority, we can just visit God's blog and get the truth direct from the source. At the very least, it would kill the middle men and remove them from the picture. Only outfits that were "retweeting" would have any credibility at all, and those saying something incorrect... would be corrected.
The only thing that would cause a greater uproar than that, is if God turned out to be a gender bending metrosexual queen in drag. God should come down as Bowie, and smiling. I'd pay to see Republicans faces on that day! :)
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Saturday December 17 2016, @01:51AM
Doesn't creating your own child by yourself make you a hermaphrodite? Add the whole Holy Trinity schizo aspects, being African with a Semitic son, the obvious megalomania, and the genius-leaving-clear-flaws in human design (especially the secretion vs excretion mess), and we've got ourselves an oscar-contender movie.
(Score: 4, Informative) by goodie on Friday December 16 2016, @06:15PM
Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera (free) has a class on ANN and an assignment on it. It's not exactly trivial to do the assignment in my experience (not much of a fan of Octave anyway) but the concepts are well explained and there are a few examples of applications of this (self-driving cars). Interestingly, this topic was deemed useless for a while until it re-emerged as a promising area of research with people like Ng, Bengio etc. Seems that a lot of current advances in AI are based primarily on ANN.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 16 2016, @10:54PM
Neural Networks: A Systematic Approach by Rojas is my favorite book on neural networks; it is very readable. It starts with the very basics and moves on from there, and covers all the topics that you would expect from a first course on the subject. I particularly liked the construction that demonstrates that binary threshold networks can simulate any finite automaton.
(Score: 2) by driven on Saturday December 17 2016, @02:15AM
I have thousands of digital photographs I would like to categorize by who's in them and possibly by features (greenery, water, etc.).
I've used two off-the-shelf pieces of software for facial recognition and in both cases after many many hours of work the database gets corrupted.
So next time, I'd like to come up with my own solution, preferably using Python. Any recommendations on how to get started?