Machine Learning

Recently, Deep Learning has revolutionised a multitude of technical fields, most notably Computer Vision and Natural Language Processing. The implications for business are enormous, with the ramifications of these change still filtering through the mostly technology-shy world of business. There are signs that Combinatorial Optimisation might be the next technical field to undergo Revolution-By-Neural-Network. If this comes to fruition, then the impact on business will be seismic.

The hard truth of AI is that methods that exploit deep, hard-won human knowledge about a particular domain are outperformed by methods that cleverly exploit the increasing power of computation.

I have a modest proposal to distill this fundamental truth into a set of conditions which, when met, will revolutionise a given field.

Lineage

I do not claim this insight about the fundamental mechanism of progress in AI as original; I have been heavily influenced by Richard Sutton’s powerful essay The Bitter Lesson.