Skynet, Is That You?

[Recusant]

The title is a rancid cliche, sorry. 

This may get interesting, if the report is accurate.

"Google Engineers 'Mutate' AI to Make It Evolve Systems Faster Than We Can Code Them" | ScienceAlert

Much of the work undertaken by artificial intelligence involves a training process known as machine learning, where AI gets better at a task such as recognising a cat or mapping a route the more it does it. Now that same technique is being use to create new AI systems, without any human intervention.

For years, engineers at Google have been working on a freakishly smart machine learning system known as the AutoML system (or automatic machine learning system), which is already capable of creating AI that outperforms anything we've made.

Now, researchers have tweaked it to incorporate concepts of Darwinian evolution and shown it can build AI programs that continue to improve upon themselves faster than they would if humans were doing the coding.

The new system is called AutoML-Zero, and although it may sound a little alarming, it could lead to the rapid development of smarter systems - for example, neural networked designed to more accurately mimic the human brain with multiple layers and weightings, something human coders have struggled with.

"It is possible today to automatically discover complete machine learning algorithms just using basic mathematical operations as building blocks," write the researchers in their pre-print paper. "We demonstrate this by introducing a novel framework that significantly reduces human bias through a generic search space."

The original AutoML system is intended to make it easier for apps to leverage machine learning, and already includes plenty of automated features itself, but AutoML-Zero takes the required amount of human input way down.

Using a simple three-step process - setup, predict and learn - it can be thought of as machine learning from scratch.

[Continues . . .]

[xSilverPhinx]

Makes sense, some evolutionary mechanisms are excellent problem solvers, IMO. So why not use a similar mechanism to create outstanding complexity in an infinitely smaller timescale compared to biological evolution?

[Icarus]

^ Orwellian stuff!

[Biggus Dickus]

This is really cool stuff, and thanks for posting. I want to ask if it's incorporating concepts of Darwinian evolution, "Where's the fossil record"?

[Dark Lightning]

I for one welcome our silicic (Vs organic) overlords.