Evolution is the ultimate example of how much a simple learning algorithm can achieve given enough data. Its input is the experience and fate of all living creatures that ever existed. (Now that’s big data.) On the other hand, it’s been running for over three billion years on the most powerful computer on Earth: Earth itself. A computer version of it had better be faster and less data intensive than the original. Which one is the better model for the Master Algorithm: evolution or the brain? This is machine learning’s version of the nature versus nurture debate. And, just as nature and nurture
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