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Sergiy Zarubin
CST300
01/13/2018
Research Engineer, Applied Machine Learning

It would be hard to find a person who never heard about Artificial Intelligence. Isaac

Asimov's “I, Robot,” Terminator series, or iconic “2001: Space Odyssey” are few prominent

examples of possible features of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Although we did not come close to

developing anything as sophisticated as AI’s described in the works of fiction above, we came

close enough for people to start taking advancements in Artificial Intelligence and Machine

Learning seriously.

Martin Ford in his article “Could Artificial Intelligence Create an Unemployment

Crises?” points out that advancements in technology could lead to the unemployment crises. He

points to the success of the IBM’s Watson in the television game “Jeopardy” as one of the

examples how computers could succeed and overshadow humans in seemingly untrivial tasks

(pp. 37-39). Adam Daniel (2017) describes web application “DoNotPay” developed by Joshua

Browder to provide legal aid in fighting parking tickets. Adam implies that AI could replace the

tedious and repetitive tasks “such as legal research, due diligence, and contract review” (para 1-

3). Tasks that performed by the team of paralegals and interns could be easily automated.

“Slaugterbots” YouTube video by Stop Autonomous Weapons (2017) depicts the dystopian

future in which AI controlled killer drones rain terror in Washington D.C. and London. This

video shows us that even mass-murder could be outsourced to the machines. Artificial

Intelligence and Machine Learning are in our future. It will be up to us to determine what future

it will be.
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One of the most prominent Artificial Intelligence projects is IBM’s Watson. Just a year

after Watson debuted on Jeopardy in 2011, the team behind the project published an article

“Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!” David Ferrucci et al.(2012) and his team describe how DeepQA

[official project name at that time] operates. It uses machine learning to analyze natural language

sources and compile the list of possible answers. DeepQA than evaluates possible answers based

on the evidence profile (p. 94). David proposes that we could use DeepQA in diagnostic medicine.

He reasons that use of natural language processing and the evidence evaluation algorithms of

DeepQA are superior to the conventional IF-THEN systems (p. 95).

Six years later, if we believe the IBM “Watson Health Perspectives”(2018) webpage, IBM

achieved stunning success in implementing its technology in the healthcare industry. Which is

contrasted by Ronald Schilling (2017) in the editorial “What hospitals can learn from IBM Watson

Health's challenges.” Schilling believes that Watson program failed its first real-life filed test at

Texas’ MD Anderson Cancer Center. He says that although Watson proved to be indispensable in

other industries, it failed to compete with doctors intuition. He postulates that IBM has a long way

to go to fulfill its dreams of “creating the hospital of the future” (p. 8)

Allison Linn (2015) announced in “The AI Blog” lunch of the Microsoft Project Oxford

in May 2015. Project Oxford provided developers with a set of Application Programming

Interfaces (APIs) which allowed third-party developers access to facial recognition services,

speech processing, image manipulation services (para 1). Today Project Oxford is a part of

Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services package (”Microsoft Azure” 2018). Set of APIs offered

expanded to include Emotion API, that attempts to recognize people emotions, Speaker

Recognition API, that could be used to identify speaker based on the stored voice sample,
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Linguistic Analysis API, Custom Decision Service and even the API that allows the developer to

search for people.

In March 2016 in Seoul, South Korea, Lee Sedol one of the top player in the game Go

faced AlphaGo, AI system built by the Google DeepMind division, reports Tanguy Chouard

(2016). China’s game Go is considered one of the most complicated board games in the world

which required lots of experience and human intuition to win. As a result, no computer system

could defeat human player until March 2016. AlphaGo was able to triumph over Lee three games

in a row, winning a one-million-dollar prize for its creators. Tanguy proposes that AlphaGo

developed the digital equivalent of the human intuition and could display unconventional style of

playing Go. He also suggests that DeepMinds creation could be the best Go player humanity

seen in millennia (para 1-8).

According to the DeepMind official website, the company was founded in 2010 and

acquired by Google four years later in 2014. DeepMind’s headquarters located in London UK,

with several research centers in Canada and DeepMind Applied Team in California. DeepMind’s

founders still running the company: Dr. Demis Hassabi (CEO), Mustafa Suleyman (Head of

Applied AI), and Dr. Shane Legg (Chief Scientist). Dr. Hassabis, “a former child chess

prodigy,” earned his Computer Science degree from Cambridge University with honors. He

received his Ph.D. at University College London in a field of cognitive neuroscience. Mustafa

Suleyman, on the other hand, dropped out from Oxford University at the age of 19. Dr. Shane

Legg completed his Ph.D. at Dalle Molle Institute for Artificial Intelligence Research under the

guidance of professor Marcus Hutter, “the leading authority on theoretical models of super

intelligent machines” (“About Us” 2018).


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DeepMind’s award panel is impressive consisting of several “Best Paper Awards” from

Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence (UAI), International Conference on Machine Learning

(ICML), International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) conferences.Moreover,

Demis Hassabis awarded the title “pioneer of 2017” by Time magazine (“About Us” 2018).

DeepMind developed Streams application for the United Kingdom National Health

Services (NHS) which alerts medical staff if the patient develops acute kidney injury or sepsis

based on patients test results and previously recorded health conditions (“DeepMind Health”

2018). Streams applications serve a public good by saving peoples lives. On the other hand,

DeepMind was able to reduce Googles electrical bill by 40% using its AI to manage Google

datacenters cooling systems, saving Google hundreds of millions of dollars (Evans, Gao 2018).

DeepMind also played a vital role in improving Google Assistant voice. WaveNet technology

significantly reduced the time it takes to generate natural sounding voice ( Oord et al. 2017).

Not only DeepMind applies its research in the real world to solve outstanding technical

and social issues with the help of AI. They also emphasize the importance of the social impact

AI could have on the modern world. Working closely with partners around the globe DeepMind

makes its goal to preemptively solve the ethical issues AI could create in the future (“DeepMind

Ethics & Society” 2018).

It is not surprising as the primary focus of DeepMind as a company is research. Their

know as a company that is “Solving intelligence through research.” David Silver et al.(2016)

and his team describes how they use “deep neural networks” to create a self-learning AI that

could compete and win against best human players (pp. 488-489). Volodymyr Mnih et al. (2015)

and DeepMind team writes about DQN (deep Q-Network) that uses the “deep neural network” in

combination with reinforced learning to play classic Atari games using only screen capture as its
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inputs and a joystick as its output (pp. 529-532). Alex Graves et al. (2016) introduces

Differential Neural Computer (DNC) which combines neural networks with long-term storage to

extend the scope of problems that neural network could solve (p. 471). Moreover, DNC is an

open source product that is available to anyone via GitHub.

When we look at DeepMind’s Careers page, we confronted with the following message

“Our extraordinary mission requires extraordinary people.” That statement is followed by the

long list of opportunities available. First is a long list of Research position trailed by the

engineering and operations. Among many openings, one gives us an idea of what kind of talent

DeepMind is looking for - Ph.D. Internship (“Working at DeepMind” 2018).

Majority of positions have following preferred requirements:

1. “ Masters degree

2. Expert knowledge of C/C++

3. Expert knowledge in Python, LUA or MathLab

4. Experience with data visualization

5. Good knowledge of algorithm design

6. Experience with GPU programming

7. Multi-threaded design,

8. A passion for AI

9. Contributions to Open Source project” (“Working at DeepMind” 2018).

Considering that one could get an internship position with DeepMind only in last, or

second to last, years of the Ph.D. studies with an emphasis on machine learning or neuroscience,

we could surmise that it would take much effort to get a job at DeepMind.
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California State University Monterey Bay (CSUMB) provides an opportunity for

potential DeepMind Research Engineer to meet bare minimum requirements. CSUMB Computer

Science program seems to have some of the classes specifically tailored for the Research

Engineer position. According to “Info Tech & Communication design courses” page of the

online catalog, CST 325 Graphics Programming develops GPU programming skills. CST370

Design and analysis of Algorithms will provide a solid foundation for designing algorithms

(“Catalog 2017-2018” 2018). Moreover, if the students choose their Capstone project to be in

deep neural networks with reinforced learning using DeepMind’s differentiable neural computer

to solve a real-world problem, it might look good in the cover letter. Also, CSUMB has a fully

online Masters program. Students could increase their chances of being hired by participating in

this program at CSUMB.

Outside of the CSUMB program, we would need to familiarize ourselves with few of the

DeepNet and Google Open Source projects: TenserFlow, Sonnet, DeepMind Lab, StarCraft II

API. Let's look at each of them intimately. TenserFlow is a brainchild of Google Brain Team. It

is a tool designed to facilitate research into machine learning and deep neural networks (“Tenser

Flow” 2018). Sonnet is an open source neural network framework designed by DeepMind

(Reynolds et al. 2017). DeepMind Lab is a game platform based on Quake III Arena engine and

is design to train AI in a 3D environment.For the fans of Real Time Strategies (RTS), StarCraft

II API allows the game to be used as AI research environment (Vinyals O.& Gaffney S.&

Ewalds T 2017).

DeepMind’s About Us page award section could give us an idea of what conferences we

have to attend to meet with DeepMind decision makers (“About Us” 2018). International

Conference on Machine Learning will take place from June 10 to June 15, 2019, in Long Beach
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Convention Center, Long Beach California (“ICML” 2018). International Conference on

Learning Representations will take place from April 30th to May 3rd, 2018, in Vancouver, Canada

(“ICLR” 2018). The Association for Uncertainty in Artificial Intelligence will be hosted in

Monterey California in the second week of August (“AUAI” 2018). Unfortunately, most of the

conferences are exclusive, and only ICLR has an option for students to volunteer. Therefore the

only option of being noticed is through open source community.

With the advanced of Open Data platforms and explosion of the Internet of Things

technologies humanity begins to generate more and more data. That data needs to be processed,

analyzed and presented to the decision maker in a digestible format. No human has the capability

of processing petabytes of information in a reasonable amount of time. Businesses, from mega-

corporations to small retailers, want to become more efficient, save money and maximize profits.

They can do that by analyzing seemingly unrelated data, petabytes of data in fact. There is only

one way to achieve peak efficiency – employ AI. So, specialization in artificial intelligence is a

sure way to gain job security. Moreover, if we start on that path, we might as well shoot for the

stars, making our goal to work with the best. Working at DeepMind.
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References

About Us. DeepMind. Retrieved January 09, 2018, from https://deepmind.com/about/.

AUAI. Retrieved January 09, 2018, from http://www.auai.org/

Chouard, Tanguy. (2016). The Go Files: AI computer clinches victory against Go champion.

Nature, Nature, 3/12/2016.

Catalog 2017-2018. Retrieved January 09, 2018, from https://csumb.edu/catalog

Daniels, Adam. (2017, August 07). Artificial Intelligence Legal Revolution - It Began with

Parking Tickets. Mondaq Business Briefing, p. Mondaq Business Briefing, August 7,

2017.

DeepMind Ethics & Society. Retrieved January 09, 2018, from

https://deepmind.com/applied/deepmind-ethics-society/

DeepMind Health. Retrieved January 09, 2018 from https://deepmind.com/applied/deepmind-

health/

Evans R., Gao J. “DeepMind AI Reduces Google Data Centre Cooling Bill by 40%” Retrieved

January 09, 2018, from https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-ai-reduces-google-data-

centre-cooling-bill-40/

Ferrucci D., Levas A., Bagchi S., Gondek D., & Mueller E. (2013). Watson: Beyond Jeopardy!

Artificial Intelligence, 199 200, 93.

Ford, Martin. (2013). Could artificial intelligence create an unemployment crisis?

Communications of the ACM, 56(7), 37-39.


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Graves A., Wayne G., Reynolds M., Harley T., Danihelka I., Grabska-Barwińska A., . . .

Hassabis D. (2016). Hybrid computing using a neural network with dynamic external

memory. Nature, 538(7626), 471-476.

How we’re helping today, Retrieved January 09, 2018, from

https://deepmind.com/applied/deepmind-health/working-nhs/how-were-helping-today/.

ICLR. Retrieved January 09, 2018 from https://iclr.cc/

ICML. Retrieved January 09, 2018 from https://icml.cc/

Linn, Allison, “Microsoft’s Project Oxford helps developers build more intelligent apps.” The AI

Blog. May 1, 2015, https://blogs.microsoft.com/ai/microsofts-project-oxford-helps-

developers-build-more-intelligent-apps/.

Microsoft Azure, Retrieved January 09, 2018, from https://azure.microsoft.com/en-

us/try/cognitive-services/.

Mnih V., Kavukcuoglu K., Silver D., Rusu A., Veness J., Bellemare M., . . . Hassabis D. (2015).

Human-level control through deep reinforcement learning. Nature, 518(7540), 529-33.

Oord, A., Li, Y., Babuschkin, I., Simonyan, K., Vinyals, O., Kavukcuoglu, K., . . . Hassabis, D.

(2017). Parallel WaveNet: Fast High-Fidelity Speech Synthesis.

Schilling, Ronald B. (2017). What hospitals can learn from IBM Watson Health's challenges.

Applied Radiology, 46(9), 8.

Silver D., Huang A., Maddison J, Guez A., Sifre L., Van Den Driessche G., . . . Hassabis D.

(2016). Mastering the game of Go with deep neural networks and tree search. Nature,

529(7587), 484-9.
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Solving intelligence through research., Retrieved January 09, 2018, from

https://deepmind.com/research/

[Stop Autonomous Weapons]. (2017 November 12). Slaughterbots[Video File]. Retrieved from

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9CO6M2HsoIA.

TenserFlow. Retrieved January 09, 2018 from https://www.tensorflow.org/

Reynolds M.,Barth-Maron G.Besse F.,Casas D, Fidjeland A,...Viola F., “Open sourcing Sonnet -

a new library for constructing neural networks,” DeepMind Blog, February 7, 2017,

https://deepmind.com/blog/open-sourcing-sonnet/

Vinyals O., Gaffney S., Ewalds T.,” DeepMind and Blizzard open StarCraft II as an AI research

environment,” DeepMind Blog, August 09, 2017 https://deepmind.com/blog/deepmind-

and-blizzard-open-starcraft-ii-ai-research-environment/

Watson Health Perspectives. Retrieved January 09, 2018, from

https://www.ibm.com/blogs/watson-health/.

WaveNet launches in the Google Assistant, Retrieved January 09, 2018, from

https://deepmind.com/blog/wavenet-launches-google-assistant/

Working at DeepMind, Retrieved January 09, 2018, from https://deepmind.com/careers/

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