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A Common Logic To Seeing Cats and the Cosmos

An anonymous reader sends this excerpt from Quanta Magazine: "Using the latest deep-learning protocols, computer models consisting of networks of artificial neurons are becoming increasingly adept at image, speech and pattern recognition — core technologies in robotic personal assistants, complex data analysis and self-driving cars. But for all their progress training computers to pick out salient features from other, irrelevant bits of data, researchers have never fully understood why the algorithms or biological learning work.

Now, two physicists have shown that one form of deep learning works exactly like one of the most important and ubiquitous mathematical techniques in physics, a procedure for calculating the large-scale behavior of physical systems such as elementary particles, fluids and the cosmos. The new work, completed by Pankaj Mehta of Boston University and David Schwab of Northwestern University, demonstrates that a statistical technique called "renormalization," which allows physicists to accurately describe systems without knowing the exact state of all their component parts, also enables the artificial neural networks to categorize data as, say, "a cat" regardless of its color, size or posture in a given video.

"They actually wrote down on paper, with exact proofs, something that people only dreamed existed," said Ilya Nemenman, a biophysicist at Emory University.

45 comments

  1. too many words by loserhead · · Score: 1

    just tell me how I can plug this in and get smart.

    1. Re:too many words by BarbaraHudson · · Score: 0
      --
      "Transparent" is a shit show that trades on every stereotype going. A man in drag is NOT a transsexual.
    2. Re:too many words by the_povinator · · Score: 4, Informative
      Actual deep learning scientist here (e.g. see my publications page here.)

      This article is way overblown. This is not the kind of paper that is likely to attract significant attention in the deep learning community. And the person who they got to say it was important, Ilya Nemenman, is not someone I have heard of.

      Move along. Nothing to see here.

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      The .sig is dead, and I believe I had a hand in killing it.
    3. Re:too many words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Could you comment on some of the claims in the abstract?

      1. Deep learning is a broad set of techniques that uses multiple layers of representation...
                -- Is multi-scale analysis a primary component of 'deep learning'?

      2. "relatively little is understood theoretically about why these techniques are so successful at feature learning and compression."
              -- Just to clarify, is little understood about why the techniques work in general, or is there something about the specific topics of 'feature learning' and 'compression' that we don't understand?

      3. "We construct an exact mapping from the variational renormalization group..."
            -- Is this not new, not correct, or is this simply not of much use to deep learning?

      4. "Our results suggests that deep learning algorithms may be employing a generalized RG-like scheme..."
            -- Do you disagree with this or simply do not find it of use? Is this not new?

      The renormalization group theory is so general and powerful, it's had profound impacts on many areas of theoretical and mathematical physics. Do you think this can't or won't impact the field of deep learning? If deep learning has multi-scale analysis at its heart, it appears on the surface that RG should be a good treatment. Have there been attempts to use RG for deep learning aside from the present work?

      If the connection is real, it would seem to suggest that perhaps deep learning may have something to offer physics, if it really is "employing a generalized RG-like scheme." Do you have any comment on this?

    4. Re:too many words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You probably have no clue about renormalization. You are not a physicist.

    5. Re:too many words by the_povinator · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Could you comment on some of the claims in the abstract?

      1. Deep learning is a broad set of techniques that uses multiple layers of representation...

      Agreed- that's what "deep" implies.

      Is multi-scale analysis a primary component of 'deep learning'?

      This may be true in vision, but not in general (e.g. in linguistics tasks and in speech, there is usually not a natural notion of scale).

      2. "relatively little is understood theoretically about why these techniques are so successful at feature learning and compression.

      True... deep learning methods are not very easy to analyze (personally I am skeptical that there is much point in trying very hard to analyze them).

      "We construct an exact mapping from the variational renormalization group..." Is this not new, not correct, or is this simply not of much use to deep learning?

      I think the closest is to say it's not of much use. I didn't read the paper super carefully (and I'm not a physicist so am not familiar with the renormalization group), but I imagine the analogy is not very close at all and only applies in specific cases, e.g. in convolutional nets or something like that.

      The renormalization group theory is so general and powerful, it's had profound impacts on many areas of theoretical and mathematical physics. Do you think this can't or won't impact the field of deep learning? If deep learning has multi-scale analysis at its heart, it appears on the surface that RG should be a good treatment. Have there been attempts to use RG for deep learning aside from the present work?

      If the connection is real, it would seem to suggest that perhaps deep learning may have something to offer physics, if it really is "employing a generalized RG-like scheme." Do you have any comment on this?

      I haven't read the paper in detail but I just don't think it's plausible that there is a very interesting connection as they are such different things.

      To pick a random example, imagine you are a botanist and someone told you there is a connection between hydroelectric dams and oranges. Even if there is a connection, it's probably not something that is going to help you very much, and you probably wouldn't be so excited to read the paper explaining the purported connection.

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      The .sig is dead, and I believe I had a hand in killing it.
    6. Re:too many words by quax · · Score: 2

      As somebody who has worked on artificial neural networks in the past, and holds a physics degree, I don't think that this assessment is wrong.

      I think at this point this is more a curiosity. Interesting in it's own right, but not something that I would expect to yield new and improved algorithms.

    7. Re:too many words by Zaphod+The+42nd · · Score: 1

      Agreed. "Researchers have never fully understood why the algorithms or biological learning work." That's extremely misleading.

      --
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    8. Re: too many words by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And Einstein was just an office clerk, no one had heard of.

    9. Re:too many words by InfiniteLoopCounter · · Score: 1

      Of course! How do you solve the problem of identifying digital representations of cats? Imagine identifying a single cat in a box. Then 2 cats in a larger box, etc. and you can identify in such a way any arbitrary cat configuration in the universe via machine learning. Genius.

      Err... except how do you tell if the cat is alive or dead?

    10. Re: too many words by vipw · · Score: 1

      The person being quoted was being quoted as an unrelated independent expert. Having a recognizable (at least in one of the domains) name would certainly help for that.

  2. Re:Better known as... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    .. taking averages and culling the relevant information.

    Nope.

  3. Re: Better known as... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Cats like sticking their ass in the air. I will be impressed if it can properly identify a cats ass or soulskill. There may not be much difference really

  4. well, i thought we couldn't know by turkeydance · · Score: 1

    the exact state of all component parts. but we do the best we can.

  5. Everything is a cat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    I too can write software that categorises everything as a cat.

    1. Re:Everything is a cat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I can has cozmos?

  6. Cats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Cats ARE from the Cosmos.

    They are superior beings from a far far far away galaxy.

    Can anyone prove they evolved on Earth? Does the Bible say God created them?

    No and No!

    See.

    1. Re:Cats by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cats ARE from the Cosmos.

      They are superior beings from a far far far away galaxy.

      Can anyone prove they evolved on Earth? Does the Bible say God created them?

      No and No!

      See.

      I think you might be on to something.

    2. Re:Cats by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

      Cats ARE from the Cosmos.

      They are superior beings from a far far far away galaxy.

      Can anyone prove they evolved on Earth? Does the Bible say God created them?

      No and No!

      See.

      I think you might be on to something.

      So who invented buttered toast? And if you strap it to the cosmos and drop it, what happens?

    3. Re:Cats by qwak23 · · Score: 1

      Gravity.

    4. Re:Cats by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 1

      Gravity.

      Too bad... I was going for Levity....

    5. Re:Cats by qwak23 · · Score: 1

      It is known that local application of buttered toast/feline combinations generate levitons in the surrounding environment, though gravitons are generated and remain internal to the cat/toast system (levity is conserved), therefore it is possible that what we perceive as the cosmos is actually a cat with a piece of buttered toast strapped to it's back.

  7. The arxiv paper by vikingpower · · Score: 3, Insightful

    offers an interesting look upon what generalizes, and what does not generalize, when you "zoom out" from a system built up of neighbouring spins, replacing groups of neighbouring spins by single-spin blocks. The interesting link with CS is the fact that the arxiv paper considers binary spins. Thinking this through, the paper might indeed offer some explanation for large-scale behaviour ( read: macroscopic ) as composed of small-scale ( read: microscopic ) interactions. Quite interesting, indeed.

    --
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    1. Re:The arxiv paper by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...and the march to the singularity continues unabated.

  8. Time is short by koan · · Score: 1

    The AI is coming.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
    1. Re:Time is short by ColdWetDog · · Score: 2

      That's OK. It looks like we can open a can of kitty food and distract it.

      --
      Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
    2. Re:Time is short by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm not worried. It will apparently spend all it's time watching cat videos on youtube.

    3. Re:Time is short by Half-pint+HAL · · Score: 3, Informative

      If I understand the article correctly, what the paper says is that when the machines rise, we should wear false ears and whiskers as camoflage. Thank God for science!

      --
      Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
    4. Re:Time is short by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

      That's what I was just thinking right meow.

    5. Re: Time is short by DigiShaman · · Score: 1

      Pets - Porno For Pyros

      https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...

      Children are innocent, yeah
      Teenagers fucked up in the head
      Adults are even more fucked up
      And elderlies are like children

      Will there be another race
      To come along and take over for us?
      Maybe Martians could do
      Better than we've done

      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets

      My friend says we're like the dinosaurs
      Only we are doing ourselves in
      Much faster than they ever did

      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets

      We will make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We will make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets
      We'll make great pets

      --
      Life is not for the lazy.
  9. Kind of sad by koan · · Score: 2

    That we might make an artificial intelligence greater than human intelligence and it will sit around watching lolcats.

    --
    "If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
  10. Nothing new by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The thing that neural network can eleminate redundant data for example by doing summaries not not new at all.
    It is actually the first and the main thing in the whole process of thinking, but it's not AI. It is not autonomous process and it's more like backend on which AI runs than the AI itself.
    What is definitely most accurate is that it's logic and that it squeezes information - but there are very many known methods of doing that already. The think is, how this is actually used, and more over, what happens next, it's another big answer.
    The clinical example of learning difficulty is the best example, when challenged a lot, subject will try to eleminste whatever he can until only possibility remains, but he will never guess the right option straight away.
    So that's AI with learning issues.

  11. Dang by DaMattster · · Score: 1

    And I thought we were going to read something truly extraordinary about our feline friends. What a crock!

  12. This is not what sci-fi had in mind by Tablizer · · Score: 1

    "Dave, I cannot open the pod bay doors, but I can show you a cat video."

  13. Obligatory Abstruse Goose by ClickOnThis · · Score: 2

    Let's hope this approach works better than the current state of the art.

    --
    If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
  14. Re: Better known as... by catmistake · · Score: 2

    I also think they're underestimating cats. But If they're connecting deep learning systems to telescopes (which is not explicitly stated), when a cat is positively identified, perhaps somewhere millions of light-years away and hundreds of thousands of light-years across, I guess we'll be sorry.

  15. Slashdot by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    At the time of this posting, there are 23 comments. 23! This is as nerdy as it gets, where are all the THIS IS STUPOSSED TA BE NEWS FOR NERRRRRRRDS posters at that are flaming the last Bennett story?

    1. Re:Slashdot by narcc · · Score: 1

      We know better than to get excited about silly nonsense like this.

  16. Re:Better known as... by udippel · · Score: 1

    Amazing.
    An AC modded down for a crudely shortened summary, to a minus 1. Actually, no.
    And the next poster at this moment in time, another AC, says 'nope'.
    Has the mod (wo)man posted as AC to strengthen her statement?

    While AC's comment wasn't really up to the article, the paper by Kadanoff does what parent is saying; and it is what re-normalization is about.
    http://www.studiolo.org/Mona/M... and http://etd.lsu.edu/docs/availa...
    are prior art. The former if you're more in arts, the second if you're more in physics/maths.
    I don't want to say that there is not much in the paper, it is not my field. Common sense makes me wonder how much effort is necessary in the competitive academic world of our time to self-promote one's work on /.; or to get someone's friends to promote an otherwise not earth-shattering approach into the headlines.

  17. Kurzweil? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Gives new insight into why Kurzweil's at Google now.

  18. Answer to Google's non-CAPTCHA? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    Interesting how this popped up days after Google's revelation to 'phase out' CAPTCHAs in favor of 'identify the picture' games (amongst other things) featuring - you guess it - cats, for example.

  19. Re: Better known as... by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 1

    I also think they're underestimating cats. But If they're connecting deep learning systems to telescopes (which is not explicitly stated), when a cat is positively identified, perhaps somewhere millions of light-years away and hundreds of thousands of light-years across, I guess we'll be sorry.

    And then all we would need to do to contact extraterrestrial beings is turn our solar system into a giant can opener and broadcast the sound for about ten seconds. This would have the added benefit of allowing our study of the seemingly faster than light response cats tend to exhibit...

    --
    You have the right to remain sentient. If you give up the right to remain sentient, you will be elected to public office