Neural samplers such as variational autoencoders (VAEs) or generative adversarial networks (GANs) approximate distributions by transforming samples from a simple random source---the latent space---to samples from a more complex distribution represented by a dataset. While the manifold hypothesis implies that the density induced by a dataset contains large regions of low density, the training criterions of VAEs and GANs will make the latent space densely covered. Consequently points that are separated by low-density regions in observation space will be pushed together in latent space, making stationary distances poor proxies for similarity. We transfer ideas from Riemannian geometry to this setting, letting the distance between two points be the shortest path on a Riemannian manifold induced by the transformation. The method yields a principled distance measure, provides a tool for visual inspection of deep generative models, and an alternative to linear interpolation in latent space. In addition, it can be applied for robot movement generalization using previously learned skills. The method is evaluated on a synthetic dataset with known ground truth; on a simulated robot arm dataset; on human motion capture data; and on a generative model of handwritten digits.

If you're not sure where to begin, here are some solved starter problems. Train an LSTM to solve the XOR problem: that is, given a sequence of bits, determine its parity. The LSTM should consume the sequence, one bit at a time, and then output the correct answer at the sequence's end.

Deep generative models provide a systematic way to learn nonlinear data distributions through a set of latent variables and a nonlinear "generator" function that maps latent points into the input space. The nonlinearity of the generator implies that the latent space gives a distorted view of the input space. Under mild conditions, we show that this distortion can be characterized by a stochastic Riemannian metric, and we demonstrate that distances and interpolants are significantly improved under this metric. This in turn improves probability distributions, sampling algorithms and clustering in the latent space. Our geometric analysis further reveals that current generators provide poor variance estimates and we propose a new generator architecture with vastly improved variance estimates. Results are demonstrated on convolutional and fully connected variational autoencoders, but the formalism easily generalizes to other deep generative models.

OpenAI's mission is to build safe artificial general intelligence (AGI) and ensure AGI's benefits are as widely and evenly distributed as possible. As a non-profit AI research company, they focus on long-term research, working on problems that require fundamental advances in AI capabilities. OpenAI runs Kubernetes for their deep learning research because Kubernetes can provide a fast iteration cycle, scalability, and a lack of boilerplate, which makes it ideal for most of OpenAI's experiments. They currently operate several Kubernetes clusters (some in the cloud and some on physical hardware), the largest of which they pushed to over 2,500 nodes. Their Kubernetes cluster runs in Azure on a combination of D15v2 and NC24 VMs.

We've been running Kubernetes for deep learning research for over two years. While our largest-scale workloads manage bare cloud VMs directly, Kubernetes provides a fast iteration cycle, reasonable scalability, and a lack of boilerplate which makes it ideal for most of our experiments. We now operate several Kubernetes clusters (some in the cloud and some on physical hardware), the largest of which we've pushed to over 2,500 nodes. This cluster runs in Azure on a combination of D15v2 and NC24 VMs. On the path to this scale, many system components caused breakages, including etcd, the Kube masters, Docker image pulls, network, KubeDNS, and even our machines' ARP caches.

Right on cue, this past week heralded in an announcement of OpenAI, a new non-profit started by a number of tech luminaries to spearhead AI research that is publicly accessible. The motivation is that apparently these scions of capitalism lose faith in Adam Smith's invisible hand when it comes to AI R&D. Musk continues to promote the idea that AI will be humanity's largest existential threat. Challenging this view, the HBR asks if "OpenAI [is] Solving the Wrong Problem", pointing to the implied lack of trust in capitalism. This is similar to my own parry: that the biggest existential threat to humanity is humanity.

Our code is based off of code from OpenAI, who we thank. The original code and related paper from OpenAI can be found here. The repo has been modified to run both ES and our algorithms, including our Deep Genetic Algorithm (DeepGA) locally and on AWS. Note: The Humanoid experiment depends on Mujoco. If you plan to use the mujoco env, make sure to follow mujoco-py's readme about how to install mujoco correctly The extra folder holds the XML specification file for the Humanoid Locomotion with Deceptive Trap domain used in https://arxiv.org/abs/1712.06560.

OpenAI, a $1 billion (£687 million) artificial intelligence company backed by Elon Musk, has built a "gym" where developers can train their AI systems to get smarter. Using OpenAI's open source toolkit, available for download now, developers can access "environments" where they can test their AI bots. The OpenAI Gym, currently in beta, provides a number of environments, including more than 50 Atari games, such as "Space Invaders," "Pong," "Asteroids" and "Pac-Man". Developers can also test their AIs on board games like Go, which was recently mastered by an agent built by London startup Google DeepMind. "Over time, we plan to greatly expand this collection of environments," wrote OpenAI's Greg Brockman and John Schulman in a blog post.

We propose a probabilistic model for interpreting gene expression levels that are observed through single-cell RNA sequencing. In the model, each cell has a low-dimensional latent representation. Additional latent variables account for technical effects that may erroneously set some observations of gene expression levels to zero. Conditional distributions are specified by neural networks, giving the proposed model enough flexibility to fit the data well. We use variational inference and stochastic optimization to approximate the posterior distribution. The inference procedure scales to over one million cells, whereas competing algorithms do not. Even for smaller datasets, for several tasks, the proposed procedure outperforms state-of-the-art methods like ZIFA and ZINB-WaVE. We also extend our framework to account for batch effects and other confounding factors, and propose a Bayesian hypothesis test for differential expression that outperforms DESeq2.

I'm stoked!! I'm broadcasting live on Instagram Stories, so be sure to stay along for the ride by following and leaving a comment for me!"