Machine Learning Meeting

Posted by Phil Long

Machine Learning is a branch of Artificial Intelligence in which, naturally enough, the aim is to get computers to learn: things like improving performance over time, and recognizing general tendencies among a number of specific cases.  We have many ways to exploit Machine Learning programs, and a lot of data to give them.  Machine Learning helps us to estimate what content users like most, what content is even legitimate, and how to match ads to content.  It also plays key roles in products such as Google Translate and 1-800-GOOG-411.

Last week, Google held a Machine Learning Summit in New York, gathering together engineers from around the world, including participants from Beijing, Zurich, Boston, Haifa, and Mountain View. The program included invited talks by CJ Lin and Peng Xu, and many shorter presentations by Googlers on topics including broadly applicable Machine Learning software, especially challenging applications, and some mathematical analysis.