Deep learning may bring about profound changes

The artificial intelligence technology called deep learning is being increasingly implemented and has the potential to bring about revolutionary changes to society.

The self-learning technology is already being used not only for game software but also for medical diagnoses, self-driving cars and robot control systems, among many other applications.

Until recently, it was difficult for conventional computers to recognize a cat in a picture, for example, something humans can easily do. To enable a computer to instantly recognize a cat, it formerly was necessary for programmers to input detailed features of a cat into computers.

Now, deep learning allows computers to overcome this weakness.

By scanning large quantities of data, computers can rapidly learn by themselves to recognize features of cats — such as their whiskers and ears — with an accuracy that surpasses that of humans.

By analyzing 160,000 games played by professional Go players and recording the 30 million moves in games played by human experts, the computer program AlphaGo learned moves that enabled it to defeat a professional player.

When a human player places a Go stone, AlphaGo recognizes where the stone was placed and then determines its next move based on what will give it the highest probability for victory.

Not only does AlphaGo monitor the entire board and predict the patterns of how a human player will respond to its moves, but it can also make effective countering moves even in the event of unexpected developments in a match.

Though computers cannot immediately transfer the experience they obtain by playing Go to other fields in the way human beings can, there is no doubt that deep learning will be applied even more in such fields as image and voice recognition in the future.

Another application of the technology is expected to enable self-driving cars to avoid hitting pedestrians and other cars, with Toyota Motor Corp. undertaking joint research with a domestic start-up company.

Deep learning technology also can be used for medical diagnoses to spot cancers, among other medical problems, in images. Security software using deep learning can help detect suspicious persons in street images.

The government also has stepped up its efforts toward making progress in AI research.

But one expert is not so optimistic on these efforts.

“There are not enough researchers of deep learning in Japan,” said Yutaka Matsuo, a project associate professor at the University of Tokyo.

Japan used to be considered a leader in AI research, but is lagging behind other nations. The government, industry and academic sectors need to cooperate and proactively work to close the gap.Speech