The Master Algorithm: How the Quest for the Ultimate Learning Machine Will Remake Our World

by Pedro Domingos

If the history of machine learning were a Hollywood movie, the villain would be Marvin Minsky. He’s the evil queen who gives Snow White a poisoned apple, leaving her in suspended animation. (In a 1988 essay, Seymour Papert even compared himself, tongue-in-cheek, to the huntsman the queen sent to kill Snow White in the forest.) And Prince Charming would be a Caltech physicist by the name of John Hopfield. In 1982, Hopfield noticed a striking analogy between the brain and spin glasses, an exotic material much beloved of statistical physicists. This set off a connectionist renaissance that culminated a few years later in the invention of the first algorithms capable of solving the credit-assignment problem, ushering in a new era where machine learning replaced knowledge engineering as the dominant paradigm in AI.