Robopsychology

I read that folks had observed that some machine learning models could be used to write code   that runs .  Let that sink in for a moment.  At the same time, be aware that biases and extensive memory have been observed in the same model. This might be considered as an implementation of automatic programming , and is definitely not the first time machine learning models are used for generating code (or strings that look like code). The model that writes code (Z) when given some inputs is itself a piece of (very very very large and complex) code (Y).  If expressed in a general purpose programming language, it would have perhaps thousands of variables and many more operations.  No human programmer wrote this code - another piece of code (X) did. Humans -> X -> Y -> Z This is now the classical scientific fiction set up where a robot make other robots (which may in turn make other robots).  In the case when Y is a neural network, X would be respo...

Machine learning is an impressive approach to create software.  The universal approximation theorem is often cited to establish the claim that deep learning - a branch of machine learning - is already sufficiently expressive to approximate any numerical functions.  Ignoring the impracticality of this claim, I would like to contrast how this approach of creating software is very different from the traditional approach with human software developers. There are many ways machine learning based software creation differs from the traditional approach: The requirements are specified differently; the creation process is different; the testing is done differently; the created software is debugged differently.  In this post I will focus on debugging. The testing aspect will be discussed elsewhere, but let's say that you have found a bug realized in the following form:  There is an input x whose output f(x) of f is not the expected output y. And the goal of debugging is...

Robopsychology , a term coined by Isaac Asimov, is the ultimate form of humans' reflection about themselves.  By inspecting what one creates, one learns about oneself.  Even more so when the creation is meant to be  like the creator.