2017-12-technique-illuminates-artificial-intelligence-language.html

Neural networks, which learn to perform computational tasks by analyzing huge sets of training data, have been responsible for the most impressive recent advances in artificial intelligence, including speech-recognition and automatic-translation systems. During training, however, a neural net continually adjusts its internal settings in ways that even its creators can't interpret. Much recent work in computer science has focused on clever techniques for determining just how neural nets do what they do. In several recent papers, researchers from MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL) and the Qatar Computing Research Institute have used a recently developed interpretive technique, which had been applied in other areas, to analyze neural networks trained to do machine translation and speech recognition. They find empirical support for some common intuitions about how the networks probably work.