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Winner Takes It All: Training Performant RL Populations for Combinatorial Optimization

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

Applying reinforcement learning (RL) to combinatorial optimization problems is attractive as it removes the need for expert knowledge or pre-solved instances. However, it is unrealistic to expect an agent to solve these (often NP-)hard problems in a single shot at inference due to their inherent complexity. Thus, leading approaches often implement additional search strategies, from stochastic sampling and beam-search to explicit fine-tuning. In this paper, we argue for the benefits of learning a population of complementary policies, which can be simultaneously rolled out at inference. To this end, we introduce Poppy, a simple training procedure for populations. Instead of relying on a predefined or hand-crafted notion of diversity, Poppy induces an unsupervised specialization targeted solely at maximizing the performance of the population. We show that Poppy produces a set of complementary policies, and obtains state-of-the-art RL results on four popular NP-hard problems: traveling salesman, capacitated vehicle routing, 0-1 knapsack, and job-shop scheduling.


What em Mythic Quest /em Gets Right (and Wrong) About Sexism in the Gaming Industry

Slate

Rob McElhenney's continually hilarious sitcom It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia may still (!) be on the air, but that hasn't stopped the multitalented actor, writer, and director from pursuing even more projects. In February 2020, his new show Mythic Quest, which he co-created with Sunny collaborators Charlie Day and Megan Ganz, debuted on Apple TV . The show follows the workings of a video game studio run by an eccentric creative director named Ian Grimm (McElhenney) and his oddball leadership team, including executive producer David Brittlesbee (David Hornsby, also of Sunny fame), lead engineer Poppy Li (Charlotte Nicdao), head of monetization Brad Bakshi (Danny Pudi), and head writer C.W. Longbottom (F. Though the primary focus is on these main characters, the show explores the breadth of important industry figures, including the overlooked and overworked testers and programmers and designers, the chipper office assistants and community liaisons, and the gatekeeping streamers and gaming audiences--all of whom play a part in creating or promoting the studio's main project, an MMORPG titled Mythic Quest, and its upcoming expansion pack, Raven's Banquet. Although Mythic Quest doesn't have anywhere near the name recognition of Sunny, it has a lot going for it.


We Are Launching the Virtual Persona Poppy on Alexa

#artificialintelligence

We are thrilled to let you know that after hard work and many testing iterations, we release the virtual persona Poppy on Alexa. Poppy is one of the virtual personas built using Flowstorm. You can get the Alexa Skill Poppy's Place now. Poppy is a virtual persona whose mission is to help people cope with their negative emotions. Poppy combines leading AI technology with the well-established method of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).


PoPPy: A Point Process Toolbox Based on PyTorch

arXiv.org Machine Learning

PoPPy is a Point Process toolbox based on PyTorch, which achieves flexible designing and efficient learning of point process models. It can be used for interpretable sequential data modeling and analysis, e.g., Granger causality analysis of multi-variate point processes, point process-based simulation and prediction of event sequences. In practice, the key points of point process-based sequential data modeling include: 1) How to design intensity functions to describe the mechanism behind observed data? 2) How to learn the proposed intensity functions from observed data? The goal of PoPPy is providing a user-friendly solution to the key points above and achieving large-scale point process-based sequential data analysis, simulation and prediction.


Could an artificial intelligence be considered a person under the law?

#artificialintelligence

Months of planning and hard work have paid off for a Houston Community College tech team that has built the college's first humanoid robot. Poppy the Robot was constructed piece by piece on a 3D printer at the HCC West Loop Campus Digital and IT Innovation Lab by a team of students and faculty. The project represents collaboration between HCC's Digital & Information Technology and Advanced Manufacturing centers of excellence. "Poppy has really opened our eyes in understanding how humanoids and artificial intelligence can work and play a part in the community college," said Sean Otmishi, dean of the HCC Digital & Information Technology Center of Excellence.


When in Nature, Google Lens Does What the Human Brain Can't

WIRED

AI-powered visual search tools, like Google Lens and Bing Visual Search, promise a new way to search the world--but most people still type into a search box rather than point their camera at something. We've gotten used to manually searching for things over the past 25 years or so that search engines have been at our fingertips. Also, not all objects are directly in front of us at the time we're searching for information about them. One area where I've found visual search useful is outside, in the natural world. I go for hikes frequently, a form of retreat from the constant digital interactions that fool me into thinking I'm living my "best life" online.


The Rise of the Social Media Fembot

#artificialintelligence

MTV's "TRL" recently welcomed Poppy, a rising star with hologram-perfect skin, an avant-garde Japanese schoolgirl wardrobe and a voice like Betty Boop's on benzos. For much of the show, she perched silently on the couch and methodically stacked candies on a glass table. A longhaired handler called Titanic Sinclair accompanied her, explaining, "I'm just making sure she doesn't malfunction." Poppy proved a tough interview. Asked what she thought of the Grammys, which had aired the night before, she chirped: "Um, I don't really remember them."


Adobe Lightroom's new Search feature uses machine learning to ID your photos

PCWorld

Lightroom users who sync their photos to the app's Web module can now test out a new and improved way to locate specific images: Search. As part of a new Lightroom Technology Preview series debuting today, Adobe is making the search feature available to Creative Cloud Photography Plan subscribers to test and offer feedback before finalizing it. As described in a blog post Friday morning, Search lets you type in a keyword to enable Lightroom to display all related images it finds in your library, even images you never tagged or labeled. Macworld got to test out the new feature early, and it worked quite nicely. Just log in to your account, and click on the Lr logo at the top left to access the menu. There, you'll find the new Technology Previews feature.