Ask HN: Does anyone know of a good technical history of Machine Learning?

10 points·westoncb··3 comments

I'm primarily interested in the history of the concepts behind neural networks, from the origin of the concept to as near as I can get to things like Differentiable Neural Computers.

The ideal would be something that includes some info on the people involved, but which focuses on motivations at the various points where key concepts evolved.

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I have the first edition Artificial Intelligence: a modern approach. Each chapter ends with an Historical and Bibliographic Notes section and that's probably where I would start.

The book also fleshes out the concept of machine learning versus other approaches to 'classic' AI. There are other implementation types of machine learning in addition to neural network based approaches. Machine Learning happens at a level of abstraction just below the top level abstraction of a decision making agent.

It is only recently (around 2012) or so, that neural networks became so dominant as to be considered synonymous with 'machine learning'. Cheap GPU's played a big role. So did better tooling.

I remember an informative article series [1] that was posted here some months ago. Previous discussion on it [2].

[1]: http://www.andreykurenkov.com/writing/a-brief-history-of-neu...

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10910887

Looks good--thanks!

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