机器学习中倒三角符号_机器学习的三角误差

机器学习中倒三角符号

By David Weinberger

大卫·温伯格(David Weinberger)

AI Outside In is a column by PAIR’s writer-in-residence, David Weinberger, who offers his outsider perspective on key ideas in machine learning. His opinions are his own and do not necessarily reflect those of Google.

AI Outside In 是PAIR的常驻作者David Weinberger的专栏文章，他提供了有关机器学习关键思想的局外人观点。 他的观点是他自己的，不一定反映Google的观点。

机器学习的超能力 (Machine learning’s superpower)

When we humans argue over what’s fair, sometimes it’s about principles, sometimes about consequences, and sometimes about trade-offs. But machine learning systems can bring us to think about fairness — and many other things — in terms of three interrelated factors: two ways the machine learning (ML) can go wrong, and the most basic way of adjusting the balance between these potential errors. The types of error you’ll prefer to live with depends entirely on the sort of fairness — defined mathematically — you’re aiming your ML system at. But one way or another, you have to decide.

当我们人类争论什么是公平的时候，有时是关于原则，有时是后果，有时是权衡。 但是，机器学习系统可以使我们从三个相互关联的因素来考虑公平性以及许多其他方面：机器学习(ML)出错的两种方式，以及调节这些潜在错误之间的平衡的最基本的方式。 您更愿意忍受的错误类型完全取决于以ML系统为目标的公平性(以数学方式定义)。 但是，您必须决定一种方式。

At their heart, many ML systems are classifiers. They ask: Should this photo go into the bucket of beach photos or not? Should this dark spot on a medical scan be classified as a fibrous growth or something else? Should this book go on the “Recommended for You” or “You’re Gonna Hate It” list? ML’s superpower is that it lets computers make these sorts of “decisions” based on what they’ve inferred from looking at thousands or even millions of examples that have already been reliably classified. From these examples they notice patterns that indicate which categories new inputs should be put into.

本质上，许多机器学习系统都是分类器。 他们问：这张照片是否应该放在沙滩照片的桶中？ 是否应该将医学扫描上的黑点归类为纤维状生长或其他？ 这本书应该放在“推荐给您”还是“您讨厌它”清单上？ ML的超强能力是，它使计算机可以根据从数千个甚至数百万个已经可靠分类的示例中得出的结论来做出这些“决定”。 从这些示例中，他们注意到指示新输入应放入哪些类别的模式。

While this works better than almost anyone would expect — and a tremendous amount of research is devoted to fundamental improvements in classification algorithms — virtually every ML system that classifies inputs mis-classifies some of them. An image classifier might think that the photo of a desert is a photo of a beach. The cellphone you’re dictating into might insist that you said “Wreck a nice beach” instead of “Recognize speech.”

尽管这比几乎任何人都预期的要好，并且大量研究致力于分类算法的根本改进，但实际上，对输入进行分类的每个ML系统都会对其中一些进行错误分类。 图像分类器可能认为沙漠的照片就是海滩的照片。 您要输入的手机可能会坚持要求您说“ 破坏美丽的海滩 ”，而不是“识别语音”。

So, researchers and developers typically test and tune their ML systems by having them classify data that’s already been reliably