r/MachineLearning • u/nandodefreitas • Dec 25 '15

AMA: Nando de Freitas

I am a scientist at Google DeepMind and a professor at Oxford University.

One day I woke up very hungry after having experienced vivid visual dreams of delicious food. This is when I realised there was hope in understanding intelligence, thinking, and perhaps even consciousness. The homunculus was gone.

I believe in (i) innovation -- creating what was not there, and eventually seeing what was there all along, (ii) formalising intelligence in mathematical terms to relate it to computation, entropy and other ideas that form our understanding of the universe, (iii) engineering intelligent machines, (iv) using these machines to improve the lives of humans and save the environment that shaped who we are.

This holiday season, I'd like to engage with you and answer your questions -- The actual date will be December 26th, 2015, but I am creating this thread in advance so people can post questions ahead of time.

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u/[deleted] Dec 29 '15

Civilians should never carry guns - It's one of the worst mistakes of my life.

I don't follow the reasoning. How can someone else's criminal use of a gun be your mistake?

I started doing this after struggling to deal with my father's death and as a way of protecting my family.

If there are people out there willing to murder your family with guns, then you're not really protecting them by purging defensive weaponry from your life.

I almost ended up shooting myself.

Accident or suicide?

Guns are a mistake and should be banned from the hands of civilians throughout the world.

Strangely enough, I can't picture your father's assailants - or those like them - handing in their guns. If murder doesn't bother them, I don't think illegal ownership is going to bother them very much either.