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Software Learns To Design Software
If computers are so capable, why can't they design their own software? Well - they can.
One set of experiments from Google’s DeepMind group suggests that what researchers are terming “learning to learn” could also help lessen the problem of machine-learning software needing to consume vast amounts of data on a specific task in order to perform it well.
The researchers challenged their software to create learning systems for collections of multiple different, but related, problems, such as navigating mazes. It came up with designs that showed an ability to generalize, and pick up new tasks with less additional training than would be usual.
The incomparable Isaac Asimov predicted this development in his 1958 story The Feeling of Power:
Update 20-Apr-2024: An earlier reference to the idea of computers that design, improve and upgrade themselves can be found in The Machines That Think, a 1939 short story by Raymond Z. Gallun writing as William Callahan. See the article for synthetic intellects.
End update.
Via Technology Review.
In one experiment, researchers at the Google Brain artificial intelligence research group had software design a machine-learning system to take a test used to benchmark software that processes language. What it came up with surpassed previously published results from software designed by humans.
"...It seems that at one time computers were designed directly by human beings. Those were simple computers, of course, this being before the time of the rational use of computers to design more advanced computers had been established."
(Read more about computers improve computers)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 1/20/2017)
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