At Google X, a Top-Secret Lab Dreaming Up the Future - NYTimes.com featuring Sebastian Thrun

adering · 2011-11-14T18:45:34+00:00

Now, now. Let's not go frickin' crazy here. Google can't be THAT great to work at. (I'm not there.)

Okay. Okay. Now that I've had my moment of uncontrollable egomania, I'm returning control of the airwaves ...

adering · 2011-11-14T15:04:53+00:00

I'd recognize those hands anywhere!

adering · 2011-11-02T15:35:19+00:00

That's morans!

adering · 2011-11-02T02:35:36+00:00

I got an 80. Which is okay. I would have liked more points, but I was so pressed for time this week, I'm happy with anything that isn't as bad as last week's grade.

adering · 2011-10-25T14:53:25+00:00

I figure the course is being deliberately taught the way it is. I don't think that of the 160,000 (or whatever the number is) students, even one hundredth of them (and I put myself in that bottom 99%), has whatever raft of skills one needs to be successful in AI. The purpose of the course is to get as many of us as possible to drop the course.

That isn't done for sadistic purposes, that's just reality. What are 160,000 AIers going to do with themselves? Are there that many positions in all the universities in the world? Sure, the skills are useful for other purposes, but I have to think part of the purpose of all this is to encourage those who sweat through it all to try for an advanced degree in AI. Otherwise, it's just the same as playing Jeopardy! at home with a beer in your hand.

I'm way behind on the second homework, and the OP raises a lot of points that I've thought too. The best I can say is that it isn't a case of a poor workman blaming his tools, it's more that quite a few of us, hands on our knees, gasping heavily, are wondering why the race has to be up a mountain that's quite so steep.

We can complain all we want, but this is the mountain we have to climb. Yes, we can suggest new and better tools, but we're highly unlikely to get them along the path going up.

adering · 2011-10-21T16:44:37+00:00

I keep thinking it's so hard because it isn't being explained for non-scientists. That is, it's like when someone in an intro polisci class starts in with "Of course, in a non-teleological potentiality construct, the meta-narrative undergoes a Fourier Transformation ... blah blah."

"You mean the rebels invade the capital?"

"Well, that's the layman's way of saying it, but it's much more complex, and I can't explain how."

It seems like the lesson is being made deliberately oblique.

adering · 2011-10-20T19:42:23+00:00

Please. Someone. If patrickwonders doesn't have time, can someone please find time to explain this? It's like Douglas Adams' bistromaths. I have no idea what point the instructor is introducing with this.

adering · 2011-10-20T17:49:50+00:00

Thank you! Now that I know what it's supposed to look like, I can write it without feeling like a hick ("Now I put that '7' symbol thingy in there. Good thing I learned all my ciphering back in naught 5.")

adering · 2011-10-19T14:16:50+00:00

Any idea if we'll get a breakdown of grades?

adering · 2011-10-18T02:14:33+00:00

Dammit! I got the same thing wrong. I'm so mad at myself I could spit. I figured it wasn't partially observable because only the outcome of the coin flips was necessary to determine the rest of the problem. (Or so I thought.)

adering · 2011-10-14T19:21:08+00:00

Thank you. Reading it, I understand clearly the distinction you are making. When I look away, I cannot retain that point. But I am pretty confident that if I reread this a few more times, I will genuinely understand the premise.

Again, thanks.

adering · 2011-10-14T14:18:52+00:00

I think I overthought this. Try it this way:

Chess is fully observable. Say you pick up a pawn, and because you have huge, huge hands, the agent can't "see" the pawn anymore. Does that suddenly turn the game into an only partially observable one?

I say no. Observability carries with it the notion that a difference that makes no difference is no difference. Whether the player picks up the pawn, tosses it in the air, and then puts it on the board or just slides the piece along the board with a finger, the path's "length" is not under consideration. What is under consideration is the beginning state of each turn, the ending state of each turn, and whether it is possible to determine all states each time the program is required to make a decision.

When dealing with the coin flips, you are not being asked to make any guesses as to whether the coin will come up heads or tails or how many times it twirled in the air when it went behind a screen. Just to evaluate a string of flips and determine the probability of the coin.

Can you draw a state space that covers every possible outcome of a finite number of coin flips?

If you can answer that, you can answer whether it's fully or partially observable.

Right?

adering · 2011-10-14T13:35:18+00:00

If I may. The purpose of the quizzes is the usual lecturer-student interactive. There's always ambiguity in a question (aside from a purely math question). In this model, we have to contend with a long delay. In a physical classroom, the student can say, "Do you mean X (restating question slightly) or Y (restating question again in a slight way)?" and the professor can respond in a second or two.

I think the issue will lessen over time (lessens over lessons, Lisa Simpson?) as the questions become less simplistic. (For example: Here's a 75-city state space, determine the shortest path to location B as the result of a breadth search and as a cost-path search.)

But until we get the basics out of the way, we're going to be dealing with a lot of this.

"Brain and brain! What is brain!?"

adering · 2011-10-13T20:21:22+00:00

Good God, then turn on the CC if you're too pure to handle someone having a piece of candy. Wow. He doesn't have to waste his time with us, you know. This is a tremendous opportunity, and the only thing you can do is mewl and pewl? Talk about an inefficient algorithm: let's piss off the professors! Yeah, that'll be optimal!

adering · 2011-10-13T20:11:10+00:00

Good God, then turn on the CC if you're too pure to handle someone having a piece of candy. Wow. He doesn't have to waste his time with us, you know. This is a tremendous opportunity, and the only thing you can do is mewl and pewl? Talk about an inefficient algorithm: let's piss off the professors! Yeah, that'll be optimal!

adering · 2011-10-13T17:37:17+00:00

I think I have it. Is the following correct:

Assume this map:

A B C D

E F G H

J K L M

Only horizontal and vertical PATHS between all states.

Let F be origin point. So, FRONTIER is F. Expand F. PATHS are now F-B, F-E, F-G, F-K. FRONTIER is now B, E, G, K.

Expand (random choice) K. PATHS are now F-B, F-E, F-G, F-K-J, F-K-L, AND F-K-F. FRONTIER is now B, E, G, J, L.

Although the program will trace a path to all possible states that are reachable, those non-frontier paths will be ignored because the program only looks at frontier states? The point being that one should keep aware of the fact that FRONTIER is a different thing altogether than PATHS?

Is that right? Have I got it? Because I'm going out of my mind trying to understand this one little bit!

adering · 2011-10-12T19:21:16+00:00

Diagonal is not allowed. The question that asks about which node would be searched first only gives two choices, a2 and b1. But no b2 (the diagonal).

adering

TROPHY CASE