

Conversation starter: Machine learning in one sentence - danger
http://blog.smellthedata.com/2010/01/machine-learning-in-one-sentence.html

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RiderOfGiraffes
I'm trying to work out why computers are so stupid, and stop them.

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JacobAldridge
With the follow up sentence being "So far, it seems to happen only when they
interact with humans, and I'm working to cut down their need for involvement."

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keefe
I work on detecting and exploiting interesting patterns in data.

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mitko
My line is "I do Artificial Intelligence". To most people it sounds like
rocket science. It also has some The Matrix/Terminator/I Robot flavor.

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danger
I've tried that one before and--no joke--the person got very excited, and
started going on and on about aliens and life on Mars. I couldn't figure out
why until I realized that he had mistaken AI for ET.

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madair
I think that "I teach computers how to learn" is more indicative of the
chicken or the egg nature of the problem.

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lbrandy
I've worked at a face recognition startup for 5 years now. I've already solved
this guy's problem. You have the correct answer. My response is slightly
modified in that I open with "I work at a software startup... we do face
recognition". And if they ask how it works, I say "We don't teach computers
how to recognize faces, we teach computers how to learn how to recognize
faces" and most people tend to light up (and/or have their mind blown).

If you mention "startup", "face recognition", and "teaching computers how to
learn", virtually everyone has something they want to talk about.

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marze
I'm involved in the creation of our eventual overlords.

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pgbovine
i would start with the abstract to one of your papers, then keep iterating
over it and simplifying it until you think your target audience can comprehend
it, then say that sentence to him/her

that way, you stand a chance of preserving at least a part of what you're
_actually_ doing rather than stating a hand-wavy "I help computers to think"

