Saturday, March 19, 2011

Publications by Googlers in Artificial Intelligence and Data Mining

There is a ton here that is very interesting stuff:

http://research.google.com/pubs/ArtificialIntelligenceandDataMining.html

Additionally, there is a category for machine learning here:

http://research.google.com/pubs/MachineLearning.html

These appear to be the two categories most interesting to me, but there are many others as well.

On a side note, technically speaking I think that it is correct to consider Data Mining and Machine Learning both as sub disciplines of Artificial Intelligence.

This is supported by the following capabilities as described from Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach 2nd Edition (I have not yet updated to the 3rd Edition):
  • natural language processing
  • knowledge representation
  • automated reasoning
  • machine learning
  • computer vision
  • robotics
From which it seems that one could argue that data mining is possibly a sub discipline of any/all of the items highlighted in blue.

I guess that Google has divided up the way that they did based on the volume of research and the groupings that made the most sense to them.  Not really a big deal, but I find it interesting.  Also, note that the disciplines identified above are focused on an AI approach of 'acting humanly'.  This is one of the four generally acknowledged approaches of modelling AI (possibly for consideration at some later time):
  • acting humanly
  • thinking humanly
  • thinking rationally
  • acting rationally
It is interesting to me that even though AI is over 50 years old, there is still some amount of inconsistency in terminology (and I am intentionally avoiding all of the philosophical arguments between weak AI, strong AI, and all the various shades therein).