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Tractable Querying and Learning in Hybrid Domains via Sum-Product Networks

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Probabilistic representations, such as Bayesian and Markov networks, are fundamental to much of statistical machine learning. Thus, learning probabilistic representations directly from data is a deep challenge, the main computational bottleneck being inference that is intractable. Tractable learning is a powerful new paradigm that attempts to learn distributions that support efficient probabilistic querying. By leveraging local structure, representations such as sum-product networks (SPNs) can capture high tree-width models with many hidden layers, essentially a deep architecture, while still admitting a range of probabilistic queries to be computable in time polynomial in the network size. The leaf nodes in SPNs, from which more intricate mixtures are formed, are tractable univariate distributions, and so the literature has focused on Bernoulli and Gaussian random variables. This is clearly a restriction for handling mixed discrete-continuous data, especially if the continuous features are generated from non-parametric and non-Gaussian distribution families. In this work, we present a framework that systematically integrates SPN structure learning with weighted model integration, a recently introduced computational abstraction for performing inference in hybrid domains, by means of piecewise polynomial approximations of density functions of arbitrary shape. Our framework is instantiated by exploiting the notion of propositional abstractions, thus minimally interfering with the SPN structure learning module, and supports a powerful query interface for conditioning on interval constraints. Our empirical results show that our approach is effective, and allows a study of the trade off between the granularity of the learned model and its predictive power.


Human rights commission tackles artificial intelligence

#artificialintelligence

KIM LANDERS: From self-driving cars to facial recognition new technology powered by artificial intelligence is changing the way we live and work and how we make decisions. But what is this rapid rise of new technology doing to our Human Rights? That's the question a new project from the Human Rights Commission is going to tackle. It's trying to identify the issues at stake before coming up with a final report by late next year. Edward Santow is the Human Rights Commissioner.


Human rights commission tackles artificial intelligence

#artificialintelligence

KIM LANDERS: From self-driving cars to facial recognition new technology powered by artificial intelligence is changing the way we live and work and how we make decisions. But what is this rapid rise of new technology doing to our Human Rights? That's the question a new project from the Human Rights Commission is going to tackle. It's trying to identify the issues at stake before coming up with a final report by late next year. Edward Santow is the Human Rights Commissioner.


Global Artificial Intelligence (AI) Industry

#artificialintelligence

Germany Market Analysis Table 35: German Recent Past, Current & Future Analysis for Artificial Intelligence Analyzed with Annual Revenue Figures in US$ Million for Years 2015 through 2024 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) 9.4.3 Italy Market Analysis Table 36: Italian Recent Past, Current & Future Analysis for Artificial Intelligence Analyzed with Annual Revenue Figures in US$ Million for Years 2015 through 2024 (includes corresponding Graph/Chart) 9.4.4


How tech's richest plan to save themselves after the apocalypse

The Guardian

Last year, I got invited to a super-deluxe private resort to deliver a keynote speech to what I assumed would be a hundred or so investment bankers. It was by far the largest fee I had ever been offered for a talk โ€“ about half my annual professor's salary โ€“ all to deliver some insight on the subject of "the future of technology". I've never liked talking about the future. The Q&A sessions always end up more like parlor games, where I'm asked to opine on the latest technology buzzwords as if they were ticker symbols for potential investments: blockchain, 3D printing, Crispr. The audiences are rarely interested in learning about these technologies or their potential impacts beyond the binary choice of whether or not to invest in them.


AI can predict your personality just by how your eyes move

#artificialintelligence

YOU may think you are pretty hard to read, but artificial intelligence can predict your personality just from subtle, unconscious eye movements. Psychologists have suspected that personality influences how we visually take in the world. Curious people tend to look around more and open-minded people gaze longer at abstract images, for example. Now, Tobias Loetscher at the University of South Australia and his colleagues have used machine learning to study the relationship between eye movements and personality more closely.


World's Largest Robot Hauls Ore Through Western Australia

IEEE Spectrum Robotics

It's often the case that the more useful a robot is, the less exciting it is. The robots that do the hardest jobs tend to be straightforward solutions to straightforward problems, because that's what works. The (self-declared) world's largest robot is an efficient, grubby example of this--it's an autonomous train that recently hauled 28,000 metric tons of iron ore 280 kilometers across the Australian desert. Australia is a big place, and it takes a lot of effort to get material out of the middle of Australia (where it's not useful) to the coast (where it can be taken somewhere that it is). Trains are the most efficient way of doing this, and they travel back and forth through a whole lot of nothing, taking ore from mine to port and bringing the empty cars back again.


Animals Teach Robots to Find Their Way

Communications of the ACM

A demonstration video that veteran University College, London neuroscientist John O'Keefe often presents in lectures shows a rat moving around the inside of a box. Every time the rat heads for the top-left corner, loud pops play through a speaker; those sounds are the result of the firing of a specific neuron attached to an electrode. The neuron only fires when the rat moves to the same small area of the box. This connection of certain neurons to locations led O'Keefe and student Jonathon Dostrovsky to name those neurons "place cells" when they encountered the phenomenon in the early 1970s. Today, researchers such as Huajin Tang, director of the Neuromorphic Computing Research Center at Sichuan University, China, are using maps of computer memory to demonstrate how simulated neurons fire in much the same way inside one of their wheeled robots.



Amazon's Echo Show lets users tap the screen to access Alexa

Engadget

Amazon is making it easier for those with hearing and speech impairments to utilize Alexa. Starting today, the Echo Show will have an option to toggle on a new feature called "Tap to Alexa," which will let users tap the device's screen to access the digital assistant. The feature includes shortcuts to common Alexa items like weather, timers, news and traffic, and users can also type out Alexa commands. Additionally, while Amazon launched its Alexa captioning feature in the US a few months ago, it's now releasing that feature to users in the UK, Germany, Japan, India, France, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. To activate Tap to Alexa, head over to the Echo Show's device settings, select the accessibility settings and switch the feature on.