A thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration of machine learning and the race to build computer intelligences as flexible as our own
In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask. In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible.

The aim of this book is to discuss the fundamental ideas which lie behind the statistical theory of learning and generalization. It considers learning as a general problem of function estimation based on empirical data. Omitting proofs and technical details, the author concentrates on discussing the main results of learning theory and their connections to fundamental problems in statistics. This second edition contains three new chapters devoted to further development of the learning theory and SVM techniques. Written in a readable and concise style, the book is intended for statisticians, mathematicians, physicists, and computer scientists.

This book provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advancement in the field of automatic speech recognition with a focus on deep learning models including deep neural networks and many of their variants. This is the first automatic speech recognition book dedicated to the deep learning approach. In addition to the rigorous mathematical treatment of the subject, the book also presents insights and theoretical foundation of a series of highly successful deep learning models.

This book is aimed to provide an overview of general deep learning methodology and its applications to a variety of signal and information processing tasks. The application areas are chosen with the following three criteria: 1) expertise or knowledge of the authors; 2) the application areas that have already been transformed by the successful use of deep learning technology, such as speech recognition and computer vision; and 3) the application areas that have the potential to be impacted significantly by deep learning and that have gained concentrated research efforts, including natural language and text processing, information retrieval, and multimodal information processing empowered by multi-task deep learning.
In Chapter 1, we provide the background of deep learning, as intrinsically connected to the use of multiple layers of nonlinear transformations to derive features from the sensory signals such as speech and visual images. In the most recent literature, deep learning is embodied also as representation learning, which involves a hierarchy of features or concepts where higher-level representations of them are defined from lower-level ones and where the same lower-level representations help to define higher-level ones. In Chapter 2, a brief historical account of deep learning is presented. In particular, selected chronological development of speech recognition is used to illustrate the recent impact of deep learning that has become a dominant technology in speech recognition industry within only a few years since the start of a collaboration between academic and industrial researchers in applying deep learning to speech recognition. In Chapter 3, a three-way classification scheme for a large body of work in deep learning is developed. We classify a growing number of deep learning techniques into unsupervised, supervised, and hybrid categories, and present qualitative descriptions and a literature survey for each category. From Chapter 4 to Chapter 6, we discuss in detail three popular deep networks and related learning methods, one in each category. Chapter 4 is devoted to deep autoencoders as a prominent example of the unsupervised deep learning techniques. Chapter 5 gives a major example in the hybrid deep network category, which is the discriminative feed-forward neural network for supervised learning with many layers initialized using layer-by-layer generative, unsupervised pre-training. In Chapter 6, deep stacking networks and several of the variants are discussed in detail, which exemplify the discriminative or supervised deep learning techniques in the three-way categorization scheme.
In Chapters 7-11, we select a set of typical and successful applications of deep learning in diverse areas of signal and information processing and of applied artificial intelligence. In Chapter 7, we review the applications of deep learning to speech and audio processing, with emphasis on speech recognition organized according to several prominent themes. In Chapters 8, we present recent results of applying deep learning to language modeling and natural language processing. Chapter 9 is devoted to selected applications of deep learning to information retrieval including Web search. In Chapter 10, we cover selected applications of deep learning to image object recognition in computer vision. Selected applications of deep learning to multi-modal processing and multi-task learning are reviewed in Chapter 11. Finally, an epilogue is given in Chapter 12 to summarize what we presented in earlier chapters and to discuss future challenges and directions.

An up-to-date, self-contained introduction to a state-of-the-art machine learning approach, Ensemble Methods: Foundations and Algorithms shows how these accurate methods are used in real-world tasks. It gives you the necessary groundwork to carry out further research in this evolving field. After presenting background and terminology, the book covers the main algorithms and theories, including Boosting, Bagging, Random Forest, averaging and voting schemes, the Stacking method, mixture of experts, and diversity measures. It also discusses multiclass extension, noise tolerance, error-ambiguity and bias-variance decompositions, and recent progress in information theoretic diversity. Moving on to more advanced topics, the author explains how to achieve better performance through ensemble pruning and how to generate better clustering results by combining multiple clusterings. In addition, he describes developments of ensemble methods in semi-supervised learning, active learning, cost-sensitive learning, class-imbalance learning, and comprehensibility enhancement.

This book brings together - in an informal and tutorial fashion - the computer techniques, mathematical tools, and research results that will enable both students and practitioners to apply genetic algorithms to problems in many fields. Major concepts are illustrated with running examples, and major algorithms are illustrated by Pascal computer programs. No prior knowledge of GAs or genetics is assumed, and only a minimum of computer programming and mathematics background is required. 0201157675B07092001

This book reflects decades of important research on the mathematical foundations of speech recognition. It focuses on underlying statistical techniques such as hidden Markov models, decision trees, the expectation-maximization algorithm, information theoretic goodness criteria, maximum entropy probability estimation, parameter and data clustering, and smoothing of probability distributions. The author's goal is to present these principles clearly in the simplest setting, to show the advantages of self-organization from real data, and to enable the reader to apply the techniques.

A self-contained and coherent account of probabilistic techniques, covering: distance measures, kernel rules, nearest neighbour rules, Vapnik-Chervonenkis theory, parametric classification, and feature extraction. Each chapter concludes with problems and exercises to further the readers understanding. Both research workers and graduate students will benefit from this wide-ranging and up-to-date account of a fast- moving field.

A comprehensive look at learning and generalization theory. The statistical theory of learning and generalization concerns the problem of choosing desired functions on the basis of empirical data. Highly applicable to a variety of computer science and robotics fields, this book offers lucid coverage of the theory as a whole. Presenting a method for determining the necessary and sufficient conditions for consistency of learning process, the author covers function estimates from small data pools, applying these estimations to real-life problems, and much more.

This book uses the methodology of artificial intelligence to investigate the phenomena of visual motion perception: how the visual system constructs descriptions of the environment in terms of objects, their three-dimensional shape, and their motion through space, on the basis of the changing image that reaches the eye. The author has analyzed the computations performed in the course of visual motion analysis. Workable schemes able to perform certain tasks performed by the visual system have been constructed and used as vehicles for investigating the problems faced by the visual system and its methods for solving them.Two major problems are treated: first, the correspondence problem, which concerns the identification of image elements that represent the same object at different times, thereby maintaining the perceptual identity of the object in motion or in change. The second problem is the three-dimensional interpretation of the changing image once a correspondence has been established.The author's computational approach to visual theory makes the work unique, and it should be of interest to psychologists working in visual perception and readers interested in cognitive studies in general, as well as computer scientists interested in machine vision, theoretical neurophysiologists, and philosophers of science.

A Nobel Prize-winning scientist and a leading brain researcher show how the brain creates conscious experience In A Universe of Consciousness, Gerald Edelman builds on the radical ideas he introduced in his monumental trilogy-Neural Darwinism, Topobiology, and The Remembered Present-to present for the first time an empirically supported full-scale theory of consciousness. He and the neurobiolgist Giulio Tononi show how they use ingenious technology to detect the most minute brain currents and to identify the specific brain waves that correlate with particular conscious experiences. The results of this pioneering work challenge the conventional wisdom about consciousness.