Building A.I. That Can Build A.I.<br />Jean-François Gagné, the chief executive of an independent machine-learning lab called<br />Element AI, refers to the process as “a new kind of computer programming.”<br />In building a neural network, researchers run dozens or even hundreds of experiments across a vast network of machines,<br />testing how well an algorithm can learn a task like recognizing an image or translating from one language to another.<br />“We are following the same path that computer science has followed with every new type of technology,” said Joseph Sirosh, a vice president at Microsoft, which recently unveiled a tool to help coders build deep neural networks, a type of computer algorithm<br />that is driving much of the recent progress in the A. I.<br />With it, Google may soon find a way to create A. I.<br />technology that can partly take the humans out of building the A. I.<br />systems that many believe are the future of the technology industry.<br />Google is investing heavily in cloud-computing services — services<br />that help other businesses build and run software — which it expects to be one of its primary economic engines in the years to come.<br />Eventually, the Google project will help companies build systems with artificial<br />intelligence even if they don’t have extensive expertise, Mr. Dean said.
