Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg sheds some insight in a Facebook post about his goal to build a simple AI. Zuckerberg writes about the benefits of AI systems by highlight how we use it already and the potential it has to change the world.
“When you do a voice search on your phone, put a check into an ATM, or use a fitness tracker to count your steps, you're using basic forms of pattern recognition and artificial intelligence,” Zuckerberg writes. “More sophisticated AI systems can already diagnose diseases, drive cars and search the skies for planets better than people. This is why AI is such an exciting field -- it opens up so many new possibilities for enhancing humanity's capabilities.”
According to Zuckerberg, AI has the ability to recognize patterns and this makes it optimal for “supervised learning.” The shortcoming of AI is the lack of “common sense.”
“Our best guess at how to teach an AI common sense is through a method called unsupervised learning,” he writes. “Unsupervised learning is learning how the world works by observing and trying things out rather than being told what to do. This is how most animals learn. It's key to building systems with human-like common sense because it doesn't require a person to teach it everything they know. It gives the machine the ability to anticipate what may happen in the future and predict the effect of an action. It could help us build machines that can hold conversations or plan complex sequences of actions -- necessary components for any authentic Jarvis.”
Towards the end of his post, Zuckerberg calls for people to not fear AI -- the current outlook on AI is that it can result in job loss , could evolve quicker than humans and ultimately take over the world. Instead, he asks people to see how AI can change the world.
“We should not be afraid of AI,” Zuckerberg said. “Instead, we should hope for the amazing amount of good it will do in the world. It will saves lives by diagnosing diseases and driving us around more safely. It will enable breakthroughs by helping us find new planets and understand Earth's climate. It will help in areas we haven't even thought of today.”
Zuckerberg first announced he would be building an AI to run from his home that can control “music, lights, temperature, and so on” earlier this year. Other features he hopes to add are the ability to recognize when friends are at the front door and alert him when his daughter needs his attention.
“You can think of it kind of like Jarvis in Iron Man,” wrote Zuckerberg, adding that “on the work side, it'll help me visualize data in VR to help me build better services and lead my organizations more effectively."
My personal challenge for 2016 is to build a simple AI -- like Jarvis from Iron Man -- to help run my home and help me...
Posted by Mark Zuckerberg on Wednesday, January 27, 2016
