The Master Algorithm

In 2015, a book by AI researcher Pedro Domingos came out called The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World. The author explored the "five tribes" of artificial intelligence (AI), and how each one might develop into the "Master Algorithm" of intelligence itself — the algorithm that could learn to do virtually anything humans and other animals can learn to do. The five tribes are: inductive reasoning connectionism (aka neural networks) evolutionary computation Bayesian networks analogical modelling This was ten years ago. It was very much not obvious, at that time, which of these — or what combination of them — or even whether something entirely different — might turn out to be the Master Algorithm. But it's clear now. I'm calling it. The Master Algorithm is neural networks. It turns out, the master algorithm is connectionism. A neural network, when it's big enough, structured appropriately, and trained on enough data, can do it all: langu