Ask HN: Is AI essentially just linear algebra? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Is AI essentially just linear algebra?

14 pointsdrchiu8 comments

Honest question here. After doing some preliminary research (out of interest, not for professional purposes), it seems like AI is essentially linear algebra and tweaking variables in the equation. Is there anything else happening here or have I missed something? Be gentle. This isn’t my specialty and I’m interested just for interests sake.

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No.

linear algebra is a part of AI but AI is not just linear algebra. I would say linear algebra is used most with machine learning with is also a part of AI.

This diagram is what you're looking for. linear algebra would be its own bubble within AI. -https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-9854e5bb9573b26c66caff...

Great diagram! Thank you

Kinda, but you gotta stir it. https://xkcd.com/1838/

Great cartoon. It’s funny but it’s essentially what I’m feeling about the topic. The stirring is the variable modification, no?

Tuning your hyperparams, activation functions, etc. It is great. ;)

A lot of machine learning is just linear algebra and applied probability (statistics). AI, however, is typically more a combination of logic and probability resting on a foundation of linear algebra. See AIMA.

If I understand correctly (and I am very much not an expert), deep neural nets can't be purely linear. The "adding inputs to produce an output" part has to have a nonlinearity in it, or the nets don't work well.

Source: Attended a couple of hours of lecture on neural nets for speech recognition. (Yeah, that gives you a pretty accurate picture of the depth of my knowledge here. But if the lecturer was right, the neural net part of AI can't be linear algebra. It's linear-ish, but not linear.)

Depends on the approach. If you go with statistical learning, it's more a mix between statistics, calculus and linear algebra. It's my favorite approach though, because it makes you feel less like the comic posted below.

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