Editing 2173: Trained a Neural Net

{{comic
| number    = 2173
| date      = July 8, 2019
| title     = Trained a Neural Net
| image     = trained_a_neural_net.png
| titletext = It also works for anything you teach someone else to do. "Oh yeah, I trained a pair of neural nets, Emily and Kevin, to respond to support tickets."
}}

==Explanation==
This is another one of [[Randall|Randall's]] [[:Category:Tips|Tips]], this time an Engineering Tip.

An {{w|artificial neural network}}, also known as a neural net, is a computing system inspired by a human brain, which "learns" by considering lots and lots of examples to develop patterns. For example, these are used in image recognition - by analyzing thousands or millions of examples, the system is able to identify particular objects. Neural networks typically function with no prior knowledge, and are "trained" by feeding in examples of the thing that they are told to analyze.

Here, [[Cueball]] is telling [[White Hat]] how he trained a neural net to sort photos into categories. The joke in the comic, is the engineering tip from the caption. It states that since a human brain is already a neural network, albeit a biological one instead of an artificial one, then by teaching oneself (or others) to do a task, you are ''de facto'' training a neural network to do so. So instead of designing and training an artificial neural net that could do this task, all Cueball did was manually sort the photos into categories (although he could then use those sorted images to train an artificial neural network).

It is not advisable to say this in real life, because you might then be expected to use your already-trained neural net to do a similar task (or redo the same task) with much greater speed, thus ruining the facade.  However, presenting work done by humans as work done by machines has been done in real life, perhaps starting with the {{w|Mechanical Turk}} in 1770 and continuing into the present day by various AI-themed startups.  For example, Engineer.ai described itself as using "natural language processing and decision trees" to automate app development, but [https://tech.slashdot.org/story/19/08/15/2223222/ai-startup-claims-to-automate-app-making-but-actually-just-uses-humans was actually employing humans].

The title text is a continuation of this joke, as instead of designing and training two artificial neural nets named "Emily" and "Kevin", all he has done is train two people with those names to manually respond to support tickets. Again, doing this in real life is not advisable, as most people are offended when they are referred to by programmers as deterministic automata with no free will.{{Citation needed}}

Neural networks have been trained to perform other tasks that are routine for humans, but formerly more difficult for computers, such as driving cars, playing games like chess, go, and Jeopardy!, and communication skills like extracting phonological information from speech as per [https://arxiv.org/pdf/1905.06533.pdf Figure 1 here]. In [[1897: Self Driving]], Randall suggested that crowdsourced applications like ReCAPTCHA, that have been used to train neural nets to recognize objects necessary for safe driving in photographs, may also be used for [[wikipedia:Wizard of Oz experiment|Wizard of Oz experiments]]. An example of such a [http://www.5flops.com/su/pdf/asru2017.pdf Wizard of Oz experiment for phonological training] as a form of peer learning has been explored, and related work is occurring on [https://www.langep.com/assets/pdf/Ramanarayanan2018b.pdf automating vocational training.]

The extent to which {{w|Artificial neural network#Models|computer neural nets}} are analogous to {{w|Neuroscience|human neurobiology}} is a topic which fascinates the scientist and layperson alike. While there is no fully universal consensus on the matter, at least [https://sci-hub.tw/10.1111/j.1749-6632.2001.tb05709.x one] [https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/tops.12068 apparently longstanding] [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VG8_hlnFdWM theoretical paradigm] has [https://arxiv.org/abs/1902.03121 received attention] recently.

==Transcript==
:[White Hat is looking at a smartphone in his hand, while he talks to Cueball, who lifts a hand palm up towards White Hat.]
:White Hat: Oh, hey, you organized our photo archive!
:Cueball: Yeah, I trained a neural net to sort the unlabeled photos into categories.
:White Hat: Whoa! Nice work!

:[Caption below the panel:]
:Engineering Tip: When you do a task by hand, you can technically say you trained a neural net to do it.

==Trivia==<!-- I continue to maintain that the following is a legitimate part of the explanation. ~~~~ -->
*[https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Diego_Moussallem/publication/326030040_Neural_Machine_Translation_for_Query_Construction_and_Composition Some contemporary neural nets have been trained to answer questions about the contents of Wikipedia.] 
**You can [https://chat.dbpedia.org try one] that [https://wiki.dbpedia.org/contribute you can also help train]. 
**Technically, improving Wikipedia helps train it, but for example [https://github.com/dbpedia/GSoC/issues/11 you can also look for problems with the net's output.] 
**Cueball is depicted abusing the training of such a chatbot in [[1696: AI Research]].

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Comics featuring Cueball]]
[[Category:Comics featuring White Hat]]
[[Category:Tips]]
[[Category:Artificial Intelligence]]