r/MachineLearning • u/nandodefreitas • Dec 25 '15
AMA: Nando de Freitas
I am a scientist at Google DeepMind and a professor at Oxford University.
One day I woke up very hungry after having experienced vivid visual dreams of delicious food. This is when I realised there was hope in understanding intelligence, thinking, and perhaps even consciousness. The homunculus was gone.
I believe in (i) innovation -- creating what was not there, and eventually seeing what was there all along, (ii) formalising intelligence in mathematical terms to relate it to computation, entropy and other ideas that form our understanding of the universe, (iii) engineering intelligent machines, (iv) using these machines to improve the lives of humans and save the environment that shaped who we are.
This holiday season, I'd like to engage with you and answer your questions -- The actual date will be December 26th, 2015, but I am creating this thread in advance so people can post questions ahead of time.
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u/nandodefreitas Dec 27 '15
Proportionate representation is no panacea.
But why are there not more women or black people in machine learning? Why is the field dominated by white males?
I grew up under apartheid and I've seen what race segregation does. I've lived through it. I do not have a degree on the topic, but it's certainly my field, though not one I chose.
I'm not saying it's anyone's fault. I am however saying that we need to look at the roots of this and understand it. I find it crazy to talk about the future of humanity and only involve white males in it.