Machine Learning in a Tiny Nutshell Lecture Notes for PSM, Part 4

1 Human Versus Machine Learning Humans learn. Animals learn. Societies learn. Machines learn. It looks like “learning ” were a universal phenomenon and all we had to do is to develop a solid scientific theory of “learning”, turn that into algorithms and then let “learning” run on computers. Wrong wrong wrong wrong. Human learning is very different from animal learning (and amoebas learn different things in different ways than chimpanzees), societal learning is quite another thing as human or animal learning, and machine learning is as different from any of the former as cars are from horses. Human learning is incredibly scintillating and elusive. It is as complex and impossible to be fully understood as you can’t fully understand yourself. Think of all the things you can do, all of your body motions from tying your shoes to playing the guitar; thoughts you can think from “aaagrhhh! ” to “I think therefore I am”; achievements personal, social, academic; all the things you can remember including your first kiss and what you did 20 seconds ago (you started reading thi