Does your NN know a horse's rear when it sees one?
I got into programming neural networks recently, and I'm hooked. AI is the most revolutionary technology that I have observed in my lifetime - which includes the emergence of cell phones, seeing records turn into CDs turn into mp3s, and the blossoming of the internet into what it is today. AI is bigger. Take that to the bank.
For the less mathematically inclined, neural networks (NNs) are akin to layers of little decision makers passing along information whispering to each other about what they heard on the way to passing their thoughts to a group of (or single) decision makers. Think of a quiz bowl team. To the more mathematically inclined, NNs are composed of a layered system of linear equations that weight each others input, pass that input through a function, and so on until reaching the output layer.
NNs are a sophisticated version of the whisper game but aimed at achieving much higher accuracy. This technology is being used everywhere. It's being used in the medical field to help diagnose patients and interpret test data. It's being used in animal classification. It's being used in cars. It's being used by retailers. It's being used by school children. NNs are ubiquitous.
Currently, I am testing a function that I derived in 2013 to model human economic behavior. Little did I know at the time that I would be applying it to NNs. However, it is robust and surprisingly numerically stable to testing on difficult datasets like CIFAR-10 - a collection of low resolution 32x32 pixel images of deer, dogs, frogs, cats, ships, automobiles, big trucks, birds, and airplanes. All this has got me thinking about me thinking. That is, how do I think?
I see something moving in the weeds. Is it a machine or an animal? I can't tell until I see it. It's in the weeds, so it's probably an animal. But, these days you never can tell. Maybe it's far away - akin to the tiny 32x32 pixel CIFAR-10 images. Once I determine whether it's a machine or an animal, then my mind begins a classification routine that tries to identify it. Maybe I've never seen this particular animal before, and I have to ask someone else - akin to an NN. Gears churning.
Nonetheless, soon you will find your life engulfed in AI thingies - just like that cell phone in your hand or your pocket. Get motivated. Start incorporating AI into your life. It can make you WAY more efficient, and you might just get hooked too - for the better. Can your NN tell a horse's rear when it sees one?