9 ms·

Ideas to monetize new artifical intelligence

27 points by marcus 19y ago

I've developed a new machine learning algorithm that understands the relationship between its inputs better and outperforms existing algorithms on almost every test I've done, and I'm looking for new ideas as to how to monetize it. Already working on trading commodities with it, which is progressing but still hasn't reached the point where its a money making scheme. Also working on some CAD (computer assisted diagnosis) applications. Any ideas?

pixcavator 19y ago
How about _proving_ that the algorithm works first. Prove it on something simple and verifiable like symbolic addition http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75439 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75439. Here I go again with my own agenda, sorry...
- marcus 19y ago
  This is a classic example of the saying "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" To a guy with a spam filter, everything looks like mail to be filtered. (it was a cool & very interesting experiment non the less ) Symbolic addition is exactly the wrong kind of problem for this algorithm as the symbols don't have any relationships with each other which is exactly the insight this algorithm adds, and which almost every other dataset has. I've proven that the algorithm works to my complete satisfaction. I've tested it almost every dataset in UCI machine learning repository and it outperforms the best published results on almost all of them. I've tested it on the data from the KDD 2006 cup a contest in the KDD conference whose goal was to identify Pulmonary Embolism based on data generated from CT scans and it out scored the cup winners by a 50% margin. I know the algorithm works, I am just not sure how to monetize it...
  - pixcavator 19y ago
    >Symbolic addition is exactly the wrong kind of problem for this algorithm as the symbols don't have any relationships with each other... That was my thinkng exactly. I am glad it is confirmed by an expert...
sammyo 19y ago
Oil futures?
Retric 19y ago
Patent and publish it. CAD is not limited by the algorithm so much as a lack new problems. However, if you can generate a little buzz you can become a consultant / start a consultant company. PS: Many machine learning systems can trade off accuracy for efficiency so you might look into increasing efficiency vs. accuracy for some existing application.
- marcus 19y ago
  Thought about patenting it, but the entire idea of a patent is the ability to enforce a monopoly. I will never be able to inspect the insides of any commercial AI in the field, so as to allege an infringement on my patent.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  Do not do this. Patents are not good protection, and a good enough algorithm is much better kept a secret.
- tx 19y ago
  This is what's wrong with our patent system. Imagine if all those great minds who came up with theorems you had to learn in 4-6 years of college decided to patent them. Math should not be patentable. It's a crime.
  - marcus 19y ago
    Actually most of them have been dead for a long time so it wouldn't really matter, but I agree with you some things should not be patentable. On the other hand imagine a world without patents and you'd probably get a world fill with trade secrets and that is even worse, at least a patent guarantees that the idea will pass to the public domain after a certain period. Would the world benefit if technology was segmented and kept secret like the coca-cola formula? But seriously that is a great discussion for different thread.
  - rms 19y ago
    At least patents are only 20 years, copyright is forever.
bkmrkr 19y ago
Yeh, do you have aim or any other way to contact you?
bkmrkr 19y ago
You could also email me at bkmrkr at yahoo.com
yubrew 19y ago
I am a tech commercialization consultant for some of the crazy stuff that comes out of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Scientists and engineers make all this cool stuff, but they don't really know what to do with it, and how to package and sell it. That's where I come in. E-mail me and maybe we can figure out what it would be good for. I'm thinking you should patent the technology, show proof of concept comparison tests, and shop application specific licenses around.
jbf 19y ago
Netflix challenge? No recurring revenue, but, hey, a million dollars. You'll have to disclose the algorithm to accept the prize.
- marcus 19y ago
  Thats the problem disclosing the algorithm is something I'd rather avoid. I don't mind sharing it with a company for a licensing fee as long as I don't have to public domain it.
  - jbf 19y ago
    I just glanced at the rules. I didn't see anything about disclosing outside of Netflix, but you do have to license winning algorithms to them. The license appears to grant them the right to make & sell products based on the algorithm.
    - mente 19y ago
      Just happened pon this board. I quickly looked through this thread and didn't see this idea mentioned. I've worked ACIS who's kernal make AutoCAD what it is. When you want to use their code they provide the object files for you to link into your code. It preserves their secrets but allows you to make use of the functionality. You could try something like that... I have an encryption scheme that could further hide functionality, even during execution. muxzero@inbox.com if I can help.
  - Kaizyn 19y ago
    Then don't disclose the algorithm or collect the $1 million. If your algorithm really is good, demonstrate it by 'winning the prize', but rather than claiming the money and turning your algorithm over to Netflix sell it to someone. You're really wasting your time with the stock market though. Technical analysis is just silly.
    - scylla 19y ago
      > Technical analysis is just silly. That was also my first reaction, but maybe the commodities market (which he's targeting) is more inefficient than equities.
aston 19y ago
Here's a start: http://www.netflixprize.com http://www.netflixprize.com If you've got awesome prediction technology, that's an easy $50k, and maybe an easy $1 million.
kkim 19y ago
If it doesn't make money trading, then it isn't better than existing algorithms, because that's what you're competing against.
- marcus 19y ago
  There are probably some AIs making money out there but they try to beat the market by examining a variety of commodities at once and discovering their interdependencies faster and better than humans can. I have far more hubris, I'm trying to make it work with pure technical analysis on a single commodity. Which is a bit harder.
fauigerzigerk 19y ago
You could try to find a good pilot customer who has valuable data and is willing to work with you to adapt the algorithm to their particular problem. What you want as an outcome is a story like this: "Math Whizzes Turbocharge An Online Retailer's Sales" (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202300174 http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=2...)
- marcus 19y ago
  Working with a medical company to improve the results of their CAD software. After it works (hopefully :) ) that can be a great way to drive the next client.
jkush 19y ago
I'd love to have a virtual clone of myself, i.e. something that has learned to think like me. I would treat it as a virtual assistant. I'd like it to prioritize and schedule my work. Tell me when it's time to call it quits or when I need to be doing something else. Essentially, it'd be the virtual embodiment of my conscience. Going along those lines, let's say you're a brilliant CEO or hacker. You could license copies of your wisdom to others who need guidance.
- neilc 19y ago
  http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=40064 http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=40064 Talks about some similar ideas -- applying ML techniques to make information workers more productive. Cool stuff.
johnrob 19y ago
Build a public web API to use your technology for a fee. Make it dead simple to incorporate AI into any application.
- marcus 19y ago
  Thats an awesome idea. Integration is pretty simple, as you can use it almost as a drop in replacement for a backprop neural network.
  - zyroth 19y ago
    Uhm? The latency as a public api will render it useless for most applications.
    - marcus 19y ago
      Most AI application aren't realtime (although some of them in the chemical industry for example are ). A doctor doesn't care if his cancer diagnosis takes another 20 milliseconds so long as its a bit more accurate. And a bank trying to analyze if a credit card transaction is fraud or not doesn't care about the short delays either.
      - neilc 19y ago
        Applying the algorithm to financial markets would be highly latency-sensitive, though. I'm not sure I buy the web service idea, either: wouldn't typical applications require a lot of input data (training set + test set) in order to be effective? Uploading all that data could be annoying, compared with just running the algorithm locally at the customer's site.
        deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]
        marcus 19y ago
        Training always takes a ton of time, even more so with my algorithm which is a bit more complex. But training is usually only done once and afterwards results can be generated very quickly.
ivankirigin 19y ago
Investing. Look to Machine Insight in Cambridge, and the work they've done. They're trying to train an AI system to be Warren Buffet in a box. You don't hear much about this trend, because people are making way too much money to talk about it openly. I'll put it this way: if you can consistently beat the market by a few percentage points, you can be a billionaire.
- pixcavator 19y ago
  >...people are making way too much money to talk about it openly. Or maybe people are _wasting_ way too much money to talk about it openly.
  - ivankirigin 19y ago
    Do you have any information at all to base your comment on?
    - brent 19y ago
      Do you have any information of anyone algorithmically outperforming the market enough to make them personally billionaires?
      - ivankirigin 19y ago
        I've heard anecdotes from multiple sources that there are groups of software engineers and algorithm designers buried deep inside all the major firms that are doing just this. I know those firms manage and create hundreds of billions of dollars and I've been told that the stiffest competition is in these tiny software components of the business. But I don't mean to sound too snarky. Sorry about that. So go ahead and try to get a job at Machine Insight or another such firm to find out what they're all about. http://www.machineinsight.com/ http://www.machineinsight.com/
      - neilc 19y ago
        Algorithmic trading is actually commonplace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_Trading_Platforms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_Trading_Platforms http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/business/trading.php?page=1 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/business/trading.php?... Typically this is not a question of "find the secret strategy and make billions!", but rather finding a good execution algorithm to break an order of $billions down into a series of smaller orders for a good average price, or finding and exploiting minute arbitrage opportunities, etc. Algorithmic trading is responsible for many billions of dollars of trades daily; I don't know offhand of particular people who have become billionaires off it, but there are definitely lots of folks who have made a lot of money.
zyroth 19y ago
I don't believe you.
- marcus 19y ago
  Challenge me. Select a dataset send me the training data and I'll send you my results so you can verify it... I don't mind being tested.
  - jwp 19y ago
    What's your score on the Netflix Prize quiz?
    - marcus 19y ago
      Can't really get you a score that you'll be able to trust without submitting a result set, can't submit a result set without agreeing to publicize my algorithm... Pick a different test. One where you can do the verification without a 3rd party that requires me to relinquish my trade secret.
      - jwp 19y ago
        That's not true. You can submit your results and then refuse to release your algorithm, disqualifying you from the competition. "Upon qualifying, as described above, the Participant is required to submit within one (1) week for judging a description of their algorithm along with all source code. The Participant warrants that the source code is either fully or substantially developed and functions or will function as represented by the description. Failure to deliver both the description and source code within one (1) week will disqualify that entry and additional qualifying entries will be considered."
        marcus 19y ago
        Ok missed that part in the contract... it was a bit long and in legalese. I'll tinker with it to fit it to the problem (different algorithm category, mine is best fitted for classification problems and the test is a clustering problem. The dataset needs to be manipulated a bit first for it to work )
jsb 19y ago
I would use it in productivity software. The users would input their to do list and the AI would suggest the best next task for them to complete. You could have the user input some information about their lifestyle - married? family? when do they work? etc - and the AI would take into consideration these factors when determining the next best task.
- euccastro 19y ago
  Very knowledge intensive, isn't it? Sounds as hard as passing the Turing test, to me.
paul 19y ago
Ad targeting.
- marcus 19y ago
  Very interesting idea, do you have any idea where I can get a dataset for it? I'd rather test it before I start pouring time & money to building an ad network first
Hexayurt 19y ago
License it to game dev companies to provide better opponent AI.
- marcus 19y ago
  I have no idea how game AIs work, I thought most of it was totally scripted to just appear intelligent. I'll need to research the field a bit.
  - curi 19y ago
    Some is scripted. They do a variety of other things too. For example, path finding gets its own algorithm. And they have algorithms for getting multiple guys to move around in formation. Sometimes there is some type of system with goals (get 1000 wood, get an 80 food army, kill X base, etc) and then it picks things to achieve those goals (build more wood harvesters, build more units, attack). sometimes they use "learning" algorithms where they tweak parameters by running the AI repeatedly and seeing which does better, and they can use games with a human player to do that too (if it wins too badly, have it aim less precisely). And lots of other one-off things.
    - marcus 19y ago
      My algorithm won't replace A* as a path finding algorithm, and it wasn't designed to do swarming ( although maybe I can adapt it to swarming ). And as far as I know most of the rest is totally scripted... Again not exactly my field so I need to read up on it before I can rule it out.
  - zach 19y ago
    Forget it. Modern game AI is 90% specialization to the problem domain and 10% application of algorithms. That's the breakdown of how much work is involved as well as the breakdown of what contributes to a "good" game AI. When it comes to what middleware game AI developers want, they're far more interested in a framework that helps them organize all the domain specialization rather than improved algorithms. And game middleware is an increasingly well-trodden and difficult market. Again, forget it.
hhm 19y ago
Who are you? Maybe you can't speak a lot about your discovering, but you can at least tell what your name is and how you got to this?
- marcus 19y ago
  My name is Avi Marcus, I am a 29 year old, semi retired (sold my previous startup ) hacker from Israel. Started programming at 8, started CS in college when I was 13. Flunked out because I was bored at 15. Always been interested in artificial intelligence, but a year and a half ago I read a book on the way the human brain works and suddenly I had a vision of something programmers missed in all of the machine learning algorithms they built, which is a basic part of the human cognitive process, and I suddenly understood how to add it to existing algorithms. Anything else?
  - jkush 19y ago
    We'll all look like fools if we cry "bullshit" and you happen to be right. But we'd look like even bigger fools if we just took your word for it.
    - hhm 19y ago
      I think we have to do neither; if he's clever (and if he's done what he claims, he surely is) he's not trying for us to take his word for it, or for us to say he's a great genius and all that. He's just looking for a way to monetize his discovering, and I think it's right.
      - marcus 19y ago
        From my experience genius isn't a boolean thing, people can be brilliant in somethings and horrible in other things. I try to acknowledge my limitations and ask for help in the things I suck at.
  - hhm 19y ago
    Thank you for your answer. I was curious about it, and I'm sure this info would be useful for anyone interested in contacting you.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
pcowans 19y ago
Can you give any specific examples (references to academic papers) you've already tested it on and shown an improvement - no need to give details if you don't feel you can, but it would be interesting to know which tests you've done and against which existing algorithms.
- marcus 19y ago
  KDD 2006 cup http://www.cs.unm.edu/kdd_cup_2006 http://www.cs.unm.edu/kdd_cup_2006 My algorithm scored 2.043 19 on tasks 1 & 2 Top 3 places 1: 1.35 1.28 1.27 Top 3 places 2: 13.58 13.56 13.44 Note these scores represent 5 different teams.
  - greendestiny 19y ago
    No doubt the siemens medical solutions people would be interested in talking with you further. The KDD 2006 training and results data have now been released, so its not really a great demonstration.
    - marcus 19y ago
      I had the same idea but I tried approaching them and couldn't get them to try and test my algorithm. Cold calls in that industry are very difficult... I don't want them to take my word for it, just supply me with more test data and I could send them my results.
      - greendestiny 19y ago
        Try the specific kdd people there as listed on this paper: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1233321.1233326 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1233321.1233326 I'm sure an opportunity to prove your algorithm will pop up. Its the sort of field where you can fool yourself sometimes by not being careful enough with training and testing data, so random people off the internet generally don't seem worth the trouble to an established researcher.
deleted 19y ago
[deleted]
imsteve 19y ago
Nigerian scamming. Oh wait, you want something ethical?:)
mrtron 19y ago
Dating site matching? There are a zillion ways to monetize it. The real question is can you successfully do so. What about selling an appliance similar to google search, but instead is your predictive technology. Make a public api for people to test it, and then sell the hardware option.
chwolfe 19y ago
Sports Betting
gnark 19y ago
How do you use it to trade commodities? What do you trade?
jdavid 19y ago
win the "go" competition. check out http://evolvedmachines.com http://evolvedmachines.com those guys might like to help you out. also there is http://www.numenta.com/ http://www.numenta.com/ that might be interested in some good algorithyms
basho 19y ago
My team is currently in 5th in the Netflix Prize competition. The main part of the method I'm using is pretty general (nothing specific to movies). If anyone here thinks they might have a use for this kind of thing / wants to collaborate on something, send me an email.
richcollins 19y ago
In response to the idea that your search algorithm is better than all others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt... In response to your question I say that it should be easy to monetize your algorithm if it is truly good at solving some class problems. Just find problems where the solutions are valuable to some group of people and sell the solutions you create.
- marcus 19y ago
  Never said it was a search algorithm. That is what I am trying to find in this thread ideas on where the solutions are most valuable and how to pitch them.

27 points by marcus 19y ago

pixcavator 19y ago

How about _proving_ that the algorithm works first. Prove it on something simple and verifiable like symbolic addition http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75439 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75439. Here I go again with my own agenda, sorry...

marcus 19y ago
This is a classic example of the saying "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" To a guy with a spam filter, everything looks like mail to be filtered. (it was a cool & very interesting experiment non the less ) Symbolic addition is exactly the wrong kind of problem for this algorithm as the symbols don't have any relationships with each other which is exactly the insight this algorithm adds, and which almost every other dataset has. I've proven that the algorithm works to my complete satisfaction. I've tested it almost every dataset in UCI machine learning repository and it outperforms the best published results on almost all of them. I've tested it on the data from the KDD 2006 cup a contest in the KDD conference whose goal was to identify Pulmonary Embolism based on data generated from CT scans and it out scored the cup winners by a 50% margin. I know the algorithm works, I am just not sure how to monetize it...
- pixcavator 19y ago
  >Symbolic addition is exactly the wrong kind of problem for this algorithm as the symbols don't have any relationships with each other... That was my thinkng exactly. I am glad it is confirmed by an expert...

sammyo 19y ago

Oil futures?

Retric 19y ago

Patent and publish it. CAD is not limited by the algorithm so much as a lack new problems. However, if you can generate a little buzz you can become a consultant / start a consultant company. PS: Many machine learning systems can trade off accuracy for efficiency so you might look into increasing efficiency vs. accuracy for some existing application.

marcus 19y ago
Thought about patenting it, but the entire idea of a patent is the ability to enforce a monopoly. I will never be able to inspect the insides of any commercial AI in the field, so as to allege an infringement on my patent.
ivankirigin 19y ago
Do not do this. Patents are not good protection, and a good enough algorithm is much better kept a secret.
tx 19y ago
This is what's wrong with our patent system. Imagine if all those great minds who came up with theorems you had to learn in 4-6 years of college decided to patent them. Math should not be patentable. It's a crime.
- marcus 19y ago
  Actually most of them have been dead for a long time so it wouldn't really matter, but I agree with you some things should not be patentable. On the other hand imagine a world without patents and you'd probably get a world fill with trade secrets and that is even worse, at least a patent guarantees that the idea will pass to the public domain after a certain period. Would the world benefit if technology was segmented and kept secret like the coca-cola formula? But seriously that is a great discussion for different thread.
- rms 19y ago
  At least patents are only 20 years, copyright is forever.

bkmrkr 19y ago

Yeh, do you have aim or any other way to contact you?

bkmrkr 19y ago

You could also email me at bkmrkr at yahoo.com

yubrew 19y ago

I am a tech commercialization consultant for some of the crazy stuff that comes out of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Scientists and engineers make all this cool stuff, but they don't really know what to do with it, and how to package and sell it. That's where I come in. E-mail me and maybe we can figure out what it would be good for. I'm thinking you should patent the technology, show proof of concept comparison tests, and shop application specific licenses around.

jbf 19y ago

Netflix challenge? No recurring revenue, but, hey, a million dollars. You'll have to disclose the algorithm to accept the prize.

marcus 19y ago
Thats the problem disclosing the algorithm is something I'd rather avoid. I don't mind sharing it with a company for a licensing fee as long as I don't have to public domain it.
- jbf 19y ago
  I just glanced at the rules. I didn't see anything about disclosing outside of Netflix, but you do have to license winning algorithms to them. The license appears to grant them the right to make & sell products based on the algorithm.
  - mente 19y ago
    Just happened pon this board. I quickly looked through this thread and didn't see this idea mentioned. I've worked ACIS who's kernal make AutoCAD what it is. When you want to use their code they provide the object files for you to link into your code. It preserves their secrets but allows you to make use of the functionality. You could try something like that... I have an encryption scheme that could further hide functionality, even during execution. muxzero@inbox.com if I can help.
- Kaizyn 19y ago
  Then don't disclose the algorithm or collect the $1 million. If your algorithm really is good, demonstrate it by 'winning the prize', but rather than claiming the money and turning your algorithm over to Netflix sell it to someone. You're really wasting your time with the stock market though. Technical analysis is just silly.
  - scylla 19y ago
    > Technical analysis is just silly. That was also my first reaction, but maybe the commodities market (which he's targeting) is more inefficient than equities.

aston 19y ago

Here's a start: http://www.netflixprize.com http://www.netflixprize.com If you've got awesome prediction technology, that's an easy $50k, and maybe an easy $1 million.

kkim 19y ago

If it doesn't make money trading, then it isn't better than existing algorithms, because that's what you're competing against.

marcus 19y ago
There are probably some AIs making money out there but they try to beat the market by examining a variety of commodities at once and discovering their interdependencies faster and better than humans can. I have far more hubris, I'm trying to make it work with pure technical analysis on a single commodity. Which is a bit harder.

fauigerzigerk 19y ago

You could try to find a good pilot customer who has valuable data and is willing to work with you to adapt the algorithm to their particular problem. What you want as an outcome is a story like this: "Math Whizzes Turbocharge An Online Retailer's Sales" (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=202300174 http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=2...)

marcus 19y ago
Working with a medical company to improve the results of their CAD software. After it works (hopefully :) ) that can be a great way to drive the next client.

jkush 19y ago

I'd love to have a virtual clone of myself, i.e. something that has learned to think like me. I would treat it as a virtual assistant. I'd like it to prioritize and schedule my work. Tell me when it's time to call it quits or when I need to be doing something else. Essentially, it'd be the virtual embodiment of my conscience. Going along those lines, let's say you're a brilliant CEO or hacker. You could license copies of your wisdom to others who need guidance.

neilc 19y ago
http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=40064 http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=40064 Talks about some similar ideas -- applying ML techniques to make information workers more productive. Cool stuff.

johnrob 19y ago

Build a public web API to use your technology for a fee. Make it dead simple to incorporate AI into any application.

marcus 19y ago
Thats an awesome idea. Integration is pretty simple, as you can use it almost as a drop in replacement for a backprop neural network.
- zyroth 19y ago
  Uhm? The latency as a public api will render it useless for most applications.
  - marcus 19y ago
    Most AI application aren't realtime (although some of them in the chemical industry for example are ). A doctor doesn't care if his cancer diagnosis takes another 20 milliseconds so long as its a bit more accurate. And a bank trying to analyze if a credit card transaction is fraud or not doesn't care about the short delays either.
    - neilc 19y ago
      Applying the algorithm to financial markets would be highly latency-sensitive, though. I'm not sure I buy the web service idea, either: wouldn't typical applications require a lot of input data (training set + test set) in order to be effective? Uploading all that data could be annoying, compared with just running the algorithm locally at the customer's site.
      - deleted 19y ago
        [deleted]
      - marcus 19y ago
        Training always takes a ton of time, even more so with my algorithm which is a bit more complex. But training is usually only done once and afterwards results can be generated very quickly.

ivankirigin 19y ago

Investing. Look to Machine Insight in Cambridge, and the work they've done. They're trying to train an AI system to be Warren Buffet in a box. You don't hear much about this trend, because people are making way too much money to talk about it openly. I'll put it this way: if you can consistently beat the market by a few percentage points, you can be a billionaire.

pixcavator 19y ago
>...people are making way too much money to talk about it openly. Or maybe people are _wasting_ way too much money to talk about it openly.
- ivankirigin 19y ago
  Do you have any information at all to base your comment on?
  - brent 19y ago
    Do you have any information of anyone algorithmically outperforming the market enough to make them personally billionaires?
    - ivankirigin 19y ago
      I've heard anecdotes from multiple sources that there are groups of software engineers and algorithm designers buried deep inside all the major firms that are doing just this. I know those firms manage and create hundreds of billions of dollars and I've been told that the stiffest competition is in these tiny software components of the business. But I don't mean to sound too snarky. Sorry about that. So go ahead and try to get a job at Machine Insight or another such firm to find out what they're all about. http://www.machineinsight.com/ http://www.machineinsight.com/
    - neilc 19y ago
      Algorithmic trading is actually commonplace: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quantitative_analyst http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_Trading_Platforms http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Algorithmic_Trading_Platforms http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/business/trading.php?page=1 http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/11/23/business/trading.php?... Typically this is not a question of "find the secret strategy and make billions!", but rather finding a good execution algorithm to break an order of $billions down into a series of smaller orders for a good average price, or finding and exploiting minute arbitrage opportunities, etc. Algorithmic trading is responsible for many billions of dollars of trades daily; I don't know offhand of particular people who have become billionaires off it, but there are definitely lots of folks who have made a lot of money.

zyroth 19y ago

I don't believe you.

marcus 19y ago
Challenge me. Select a dataset send me the training data and I'll send you my results so you can verify it... I don't mind being tested.
- jwp 19y ago
  What's your score on the Netflix Prize quiz?
  - marcus 19y ago
    Can't really get you a score that you'll be able to trust without submitting a result set, can't submit a result set without agreeing to publicize my algorithm... Pick a different test. One where you can do the verification without a 3rd party that requires me to relinquish my trade secret.
    - jwp 19y ago
      That's not true. You can submit your results and then refuse to release your algorithm, disqualifying you from the competition. "Upon qualifying, as described above, the Participant is required to submit within one (1) week for judging a description of their algorithm along with all source code. The Participant warrants that the source code is either fully or substantially developed and functions or will function as represented by the description. Failure to deliver both the description and source code within one (1) week will disqualify that entry and additional qualifying entries will be considered."
      - marcus 19y ago
        Ok missed that part in the contract... it was a bit long and in legalese. I'll tinker with it to fit it to the problem (different algorithm category, mine is best fitted for classification problems and the test is a clustering problem. The dataset needs to be manipulated a bit first for it to work )

jsb 19y ago

I would use it in productivity software. The users would input their to do list and the AI would suggest the best next task for them to complete. You could have the user input some information about their lifestyle - married? family? when do they work? etc - and the AI would take into consideration these factors when determining the next best task.

euccastro 19y ago
Very knowledge intensive, isn't it? Sounds as hard as passing the Turing test, to me.

paul 19y ago

Ad targeting.

marcus 19y ago
Very interesting idea, do you have any idea where I can get a dataset for it? I'd rather test it before I start pouring time & money to building an ad network first

Hexayurt 19y ago

License it to game dev companies to provide better opponent AI.

marcus 19y ago
I have no idea how game AIs work, I thought most of it was totally scripted to just appear intelligent. I'll need to research the field a bit.
- curi 19y ago
  Some is scripted. They do a variety of other things too. For example, path finding gets its own algorithm. And they have algorithms for getting multiple guys to move around in formation. Sometimes there is some type of system with goals (get 1000 wood, get an 80 food army, kill X base, etc) and then it picks things to achieve those goals (build more wood harvesters, build more units, attack). sometimes they use "learning" algorithms where they tweak parameters by running the AI repeatedly and seeing which does better, and they can use games with a human player to do that too (if it wins too badly, have it aim less precisely). And lots of other one-off things.
  - marcus 19y ago
    My algorithm won't replace A* as a path finding algorithm, and it wasn't designed to do swarming ( although maybe I can adapt it to swarming ). And as far as I know most of the rest is totally scripted... Again not exactly my field so I need to read up on it before I can rule it out.
- zach 19y ago
  Forget it. Modern game AI is 90% specialization to the problem domain and 10% application of algorithms. That's the breakdown of how much work is involved as well as the breakdown of what contributes to a "good" game AI. When it comes to what middleware game AI developers want, they're far more interested in a framework that helps them organize all the domain specialization rather than improved algorithms. And game middleware is an increasingly well-trodden and difficult market. Again, forget it.

hhm 19y ago

Who are you? Maybe you can't speak a lot about your discovering, but you can at least tell what your name is and how you got to this?

marcus 19y ago
My name is Avi Marcus, I am a 29 year old, semi retired (sold my previous startup ) hacker from Israel. Started programming at 8, started CS in college when I was 13. Flunked out because I was bored at 15. Always been interested in artificial intelligence, but a year and a half ago I read a book on the way the human brain works and suddenly I had a vision of something programmers missed in all of the machine learning algorithms they built, which is a basic part of the human cognitive process, and I suddenly understood how to add it to existing algorithms. Anything else?
- jkush 19y ago
  We'll all look like fools if we cry "bullshit" and you happen to be right. But we'd look like even bigger fools if we just took your word for it.
  - hhm 19y ago
    I think we have to do neither; if he's clever (and if he's done what he claims, he surely is) he's not trying for us to take his word for it, or for us to say he's a great genius and all that. He's just looking for a way to monetize his discovering, and I think it's right.
    - marcus 19y ago
      From my experience genius isn't a boolean thing, people can be brilliant in somethings and horrible in other things. I try to acknowledge my limitations and ask for help in the things I suck at.
- hhm 19y ago
  Thank you for your answer. I was curious about it, and I'm sure this info would be useful for anyone interested in contacting you.

deleted 19y ago

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pcowans 19y ago

Can you give any specific examples (references to academic papers) you've already tested it on and shown an improvement - no need to give details if you don't feel you can, but it would be interesting to know which tests you've done and against which existing algorithms.

marcus 19y ago
KDD 2006 cup http://www.cs.unm.edu/kdd_cup_2006 http://www.cs.unm.edu/kdd_cup_2006 My algorithm scored 2.043 19 on tasks 1 & 2 Top 3 places 1: 1.35 1.28 1.27 Top 3 places 2: 13.58 13.56 13.44 Note these scores represent 5 different teams.
- greendestiny 19y ago
  No doubt the siemens medical solutions people would be interested in talking with you further. The KDD 2006 training and results data have now been released, so its not really a great demonstration.
  - marcus 19y ago
    I had the same idea but I tried approaching them and couldn't get them to try and test my algorithm. Cold calls in that industry are very difficult... I don't want them to take my word for it, just supply me with more test data and I could send them my results.
    - greendestiny 19y ago
      Try the specific kdd people there as listed on this paper: http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1233321.1233326 http://portal.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=1233321.1233326 I'm sure an opportunity to prove your algorithm will pop up. Its the sort of field where you can fool yourself sometimes by not being careful enough with training and testing data, so random people off the internet generally don't seem worth the trouble to an established researcher.

deleted 19y ago

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imsteve 19y ago

Nigerian scamming. Oh wait, you want something ethical?:)

mrtron 19y ago

Dating site matching? There are a zillion ways to monetize it. The real question is can you successfully do so. What about selling an appliance similar to google search, but instead is your predictive technology. Make a public api for people to test it, and then sell the hardware option.

chwolfe 19y ago

Sports Betting

gnark 19y ago

How do you use it to trade commodities? What do you trade?

jdavid 19y ago

win the "go" competition. check out http://evolvedmachines.com http://evolvedmachines.com those guys might like to help you out. also there is http://www.numenta.com/ http://www.numenta.com/ that might be interested in some good algorithyms

basho 19y ago

My team is currently in 5th in the Netflix Prize competition. The main part of the method I'm using is pretty general (nothing specific to movies). If anyone here thinks they might have a use for this kind of thing / wants to collaborate on something, send me an email.

richcollins 19y ago

In response to the idea that your search algorithm is better than all others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_optimization http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt... In response to your question I say that it should be easy to monetize your algorithm if it is truly good at solving some class problems. Just find problems where the solutions are valuable to some group of people and sell the solutions you create.

marcus 19y ago
Never said it was a search algorithm. That is what I am trying to find in this thread ideas on where the solutions are most valuable and how to pitch them.