UC Berkeley ML Pioneer Wins Top Computing Gong
upstart writes:
UC Berkeley ML pioneer wins top computing gong:
[...] This year's ACM Prize in Computing is going toward a machine learning specialist whose work, even if you haven't heard of him, is likely to be familiar.
Pieter Abbeel, UC Berkeley professor and co-founder of AI robotics company Covariant, was awarded the prize and its $250,000 bounty, which is given to those in the machine learning field "whose research contributions have fundamental impact and broad implications."
Abbeel is a professor of computer science and electrical engineering whose work has already received some recognition. Along with this new award, he was named a top young innovator under 25 by the MIT Technology Review and won a prize given out to the best US PhD thesis in robotics and automation.
[...] ACM said that one of Abbeel's most important contributions to the machine learning world was his work with deep reinforcement learning, which combines reinforcement learning with deep neural networks. "While early reinforcement learning programs were effective, they could only perform simple tasks... deep reinforcement learning can solve far more complex problems than computer programs developed with reinforcement learning alone," ACM said.
Deep reinforcement learning enables AI to learn more quickly with less prior knowledge because it's able to learn from abstract, unstructured data more effectively. The approach was used in high-profile applications like learning to beat humans at Go, Chess, and Poker, and others involve improving social media notifications and training self-driving cars.
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