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There’s still no regulation on what you can do with machine learning (At least until your deepfakes constitute unlawful use of someone’s likeness, or you use yo

There’s still no regulation on what you can do with machine learning (At least until your deepfakes constitute unlawful use of someone’s likeness, or you use your classifier to make hiring decisions or something, or something like that.)

mlthoughts2018 7y ago
That’s like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with a database until it begins to violate some other law. Or like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with human imagination until you imagine something unlawful. Machine learning is a technique of mathematics. What do you even mean there’s no regulation of this subset of mathematics? If the law were to say a triangle can’t have three sides would it make it so?
- ssivark 7y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill At a loss for words :-)
  - umvi 7y ago
    There are some constants you can change with laws though. Like Planck's constant
    - big_chungus 7y ago
      Unless my knowledge is completely wrong, Planck's constant is a universal and un-changing number. That's why the kilogram is based off it. How could you change that by law?
      - umvi 7y ago
        It is not a unitless constant like pi though. Like the speed of light, Planck's constant has units which is problematic (how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?) Thus, you simply assign a value to the constant to break the unit dependency.
        waterhouse 7y ago
        You can change the units if you want, but it's still a physical constant, and it could be stated in purely physical terms. For example, according to Wikipedia, the second is defined thus: "Since 1967, the second has been defined as exactly "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K)." Therefore, the meter may be defined as "the distance light travels in a vacuum in one of those cesium-133-related periods, times 9,192,631,770, divided by 299,792,458".
        umvi 7y ago
        > Therefore, the meter may be defined as "the distance light travels in a vacuum in one of those cesium-133-related periods, times 9,192,631,770, divided by 299,792,458". Right, but the constant c didn't have that exact value until 2019. Prior to 2019, c had an infinite number of digits. Thus, the numerical representation of constants with units can change as the definitions of the units themselves change.
        thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > Like the speed of light, Planck's constant has units which is problematic (how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?) I don't follow your thought process here. The speed of light has units, that's true. Being a speed, it has units of distance over time. But the question "how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?" is totally incoherent; the premise is wrong. The speed of light does not depend on the definition of the meter, making it very easy to define the meter in terms of the speed of light. To take a trivial example, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second and 300,000 kilometers per second. If we relabeled kilometers "flags", then the speed of light would also be 300,000 flags per second. But while 300,000,000 and 300,000 are different numbers, 300,000,000 meters and 300,000 flags are the same distance. You can't change the speed of light by defining a new unit of length. You can only change the coefficient of that unit that gives the speed of light. But coefficients are dimensionless and therefore aren't speeds. When you multiply the coefficient by the unit, you get the same constant speed as always. I can't tell why you think it's "problematic" for a physical constant to have units, but I feel safe in saying that whatever you have in mind, it's wrong.
- BurningFrog 7y ago
  The math itself can't be regulated, but using it can be. Many well known examples in the encryption field.
- maxander 7y ago
  I'd argue the opposite- it's like saying that water is legal but it's illegal to drown someone. Nothing in the field of machine learning is in itself illegal, as opposed to things like hard drugs and heavy weaponry, which are in and of themselves illegal for private citizens, regardless of what they're doing with them. While we're at it, whenever anyone talks about machine learning they're not talking about a technique of mathematics, they're talking about a technique in software development (albeit that has some mathematical roots.) It's not popular because we're all passionate about discovering mathematical truths, it's popular because we can use it to make computers do cool things. :)

mlthoughts2018 7y ago

That’s like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with a database until it begins to violate some other law. Or like saying there is no regulation on what you can do with human imagination until you imagine something unlawful. Machine learning is a technique of mathematics. What do you even mean there’s no regulation of this subset of mathematics? If the law were to say a triangle can’t have three sides would it make it so?

ssivark 7y ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Pi_Bill At a loss for words :-)
- umvi 7y ago
  There are some constants you can change with laws though. Like Planck's constant
  - big_chungus 7y ago
    Unless my knowledge is completely wrong, Planck's constant is a universal and un-changing number. That's why the kilogram is based off it. How could you change that by law?
    - umvi 7y ago
      It is not a unitless constant like pi though. Like the speed of light, Planck's constant has units which is problematic (how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?) Thus, you simply assign a value to the constant to break the unit dependency.
      - waterhouse 7y ago
        You can change the units if you want, but it's still a physical constant, and it could be stated in purely physical terms. For example, according to Wikipedia, the second is defined thus: "Since 1967, the second has been defined as exactly "the duration of 9,192,631,770 periods of the radiation corresponding to the transition between the two hyperfine levels of the ground state of the caesium-133 atom" (at a temperature of 0 K)." Therefore, the meter may be defined as "the distance light travels in a vacuum in one of those cesium-133-related periods, times 9,192,631,770, divided by 299,792,458".
        umvi 7y ago
        > Therefore, the meter may be defined as "the distance light travels in a vacuum in one of those cesium-133-related periods, times 9,192,631,770, divided by 299,792,458". Right, but the constant c didn't have that exact value until 2019. Prior to 2019, c had an infinite number of digits. Thus, the numerical representation of constants with units can change as the definitions of the units themselves change.
      - thaumasiotes 7y ago
        > Like the speed of light, Planck's constant has units which is problematic (how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?) I don't follow your thought process here. The speed of light has units, that's true. Being a speed, it has units of distance over time. But the question "how can you define the meter in terms of the speed of light if the speed of light depends on the definition of the meter?" is totally incoherent; the premise is wrong. The speed of light does not depend on the definition of the meter, making it very easy to define the meter in terms of the speed of light. To take a trivial example, the speed of light is 300,000,000 meters per second and 300,000 kilometers per second. If we relabeled kilometers "flags", then the speed of light would also be 300,000 flags per second. But while 300,000,000 and 300,000 are different numbers, 300,000,000 meters and 300,000 flags are the same distance. You can't change the speed of light by defining a new unit of length. You can only change the coefficient of that unit that gives the speed of light. But coefficients are dimensionless and therefore aren't speeds. When you multiply the coefficient by the unit, you get the same constant speed as always. I can't tell why you think it's "problematic" for a physical constant to have units, but I feel safe in saying that whatever you have in mind, it's wrong.
BurningFrog 7y ago
The math itself can't be regulated, but using it can be. Many well known examples in the encryption field.
maxander 7y ago
I'd argue the opposite- it's like saying that water is legal but it's illegal to drown someone. Nothing in the field of machine learning is in itself illegal, as opposed to things like hard drugs and heavy weaponry, which are in and of themselves illegal for private citizens, regardless of what they're doing with them. While we're at it, whenever anyone talks about machine learning they're not talking about a technique of mathematics, they're talking about a technique in software development (albeit that has some mathematical roots.) It's not popular because we're all passionate about discovering mathematical truths, it's popular because we can use it to make computers do cool things. :)