Scaling learning algorithms towards AI

One long-term goal of machine learning research is to produce methods that are applicable to highly complex tasks, such as perception (vision, audition), reasoning, intelligent control, and other artificially intelligent behaviors. We argue that in order to progress toward this goal, the Machine Learning community must endeavor to discover algorithms that can learn highly complex functions, with minimal need for prior knowledge, and with minimal human intervention. We present mathematical and empirical evidence suggesting that many popular approaches to non-parametric learning, particularly kernel methods, are fundamentally limited in their ability to learn complex high-dimensional functions. Our analysis focuses on two problems. First, kernel machines are shallow architectures, in which one large layer of simple template matchers is followed by a single layer of trainable coefficients. We argue that shallow architectures can be very inefficient in terms of required number of computational elements and examples. Second, we analyze a limitation of kernel machines with a local kernel, linked to the curse of dimensionality, that applies to supervised, unsupervised (manifold learning) and semi-supervised kernel machines. Using empirical results on invariant image recognition tasks, kernel methods are compared with deep architectures, in which lower-level features or concepts are progressively combined into more abstract and higher-level representations. We argue that deep architectures have the potential to generalize in non-local ways, i.e., beyond immediate neighbors, and that this is crucial in order to make progress on the kind of complex tasks required for artificial intelligence.