Book | The Quest For The Master Algorithm — How The Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World | A Conversation With Pedro Domingos

Did we invent computers, robots, and A.I. because we are fundamentally lazy? It may look like it, but that is not the technological driver. On the opposite side, it has to do with doing more, faster, more effectively, and going above and beyond our human capabilities.

This same thing can be said of a carved stone used as a tool by our ancestors, the wheel, electricity, engines, airplanes, and of the most advanced technologies of today and tomorrow.

Most of us do not realize it, but at the core of all the digital technology we use today, there are algorithms, and those are the things that are driving a big part of our everyday life — from buying online to moving around — but it's not just in cyberspace. Our whole day — from the moment you wake up to the moment you fall asleep—is suffused with machine learning.

In this podcast, we discover what the engine is that drives Machine Learning and what its fuel is — spoiler alert: data, and a lot of it.

Our guest is Professor Pedro Domingos from the University of Washington, who wrote a book called The Master Algorithm. As dystopian as that may sound, it is actually quite the opposite.  

"The book is a thought-provoking and wide-ranging exploration of machine learning and the race to build computer intelligences as flexible as our own.

In the world's top research labs and universities, the race is on to invent the ultimate learning algorithm: one capable of discovering any knowledge from data, and doing anything we want, before we even ask.

In The Master Algorithm, Pedro Domingos lifts the veil to give us a peek inside the learning machines that power Google, Amazon, and your smartphone. He assembles a blueprint for the future universal learner--the Master Algorithm--and discusses what it will mean for business, science, and society. If data-ism is today's philosophy, this book is its bible."

We hope you will join us in the quest to discover what this Master Algorithm really means and what it can do for us. We do this constructively and positively, with hope and excitement for a better future, but with an eye open to the risk that may come if we cannot control its outcome — if and when AI can do much more than what it already can. Which is not that little.

Let's go!

Guest
Pedro Domingos, Professor of computer science at the University of Washington and author of 'The Master Algorithm' (@pmddomingos on Twitter)

This Episode’s Sponsors

BlackCloak: https://itspm.ag/itspbcweb

RSA Security: https://itspm.ag/itsprsaweb

Resources

View Pedro's work as a professor: https://homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod/

View Pedro's book, The Master Algorithm, How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World: https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/pedro-domingos/the-master-algorithm/9780465061921/

To see and hear more The Cyber Society content on ITSPmagazine, visit:
https://www.itspmagazine.com/the-cyber-society

Are you interested in sponsoring an ITSPmagazine Channel?
https://www.itspmagazine.com/podcast-series-sponsorships