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Lingodroid robots invent their own spoken language

I've been seeing more and more applications of and innovations in this kind of machine learning. This one is fascinating because it deals with robots learning that we don't even fully understand: language.

I'm fascinated by the current developments in machine learning because all of the new successful techniques seem to take humans out of the picture. Humans define a goal for the robot and then it is free to experiment with the best ways to accomplish that goal. This article on the same site has a report from scientists who teach robots to perform tasks that the humans themselves fail.

Thankfully robots still need humans to give them purpose. When machines start doing that for themselves we'll have to call in the philosophers.

The rest of the elephant

PHD Comics recently posted this video about the unexplored frontiers left in physics. Every time you think you've hit bedrock you're just opening up a whole new unexplored cavern.


(Yeah, I've been playing Minecraft)