ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
the digital marketing space . We use specific algorithms to optimise pages for conversions . All too often the best performing candidate is the page that ultimately got lucky – it received a distribution of successes that sits somewhere on the outer edge of the bell curve . When companies put all their resource into this candidate , conversions drop . We solve this problem by looking at candidates in the neighbourhood of the most successful candidate , but ultimately we would like to better understand the space to create evolutions that produce the most accurate result .”
Focusing specifically on Sentient Technologies , Miikkulainen describes the innovation that ’ s taking place in the company ’ s research labs to progress the use of deep learning algorithms :
“ Some of the most interesting work has been combining the massive leaps forward in computer modelling with AI . One of the major limitations within the AI industry is when there is a dollar value attached to each one of the iterative tests that forms the basis of the evolutions within the deep learning algorithms . However , we can solve this issue by using a combination of advanced mathematical modelling that forms an environment within which the evolutions occur .
“ One such project is our cyberagriculture program that we are running with MIT . We found that AI struggled to work with crop yields and care schedules in the real world , so we created a synthetic environment where we could grow different plants . This allows us to formulate systems of crop management for all kinds of flora regardless of growing times . Pecan plants take 200 years to grow in the real world and we would therefore require millennia to train AIs to manage these crops , but we can grow thousands of trees every minute in a modelled environment .
“ Our focus was on growing basil . We found out how to grow to the maximum yield and for the best flavour profile according to mass spectrometry . But the really interesting thing was that we found that the computer could tell us something we didn ’ t know . We had assumed that basil needs six hours of sleep time with no light to maximise growth , but the AI had the basil growing in 24 hours of sustained light for the largest yields . This takes us full circle back to where we started , with an AI working on multiple strategies
38 April 2018