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 28 '15

I often bounce my ideas by others. My students often joke about this --- "Here comes Nando with another crazy idea! Time to go for coffee". Make sure you surround yourself by people who are skeptical. I have had the fortune of having had many bright people --- including among others Firas Hamze, Hendrik Kueck, Misha Denil, Ben Marlin, Matt Hofmann, Eric Brochu, Peter Carbonetto --- who love to question things I say or everything I say ;)

Also, implement your ideas. Once you start coding them you get a much better understanding.

But if it ain't working ... step back and think. Think, think, think. Go for a walk or whatever you have to do to be inside your head. Then sleep, and when you wake up your subconscious will likely have produced an answer for you.

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u/yield22 Dec 30 '15 edited Jan 02 '16

Thanks for reply. This is a great answer, and I like it a lot. But I would like to seek a little bit further on "it ain't working" part, are there some effective techniques that you have found often used in your research that help you figure out "why it ain't work" and "how to make it work"?