A new approach to artificial intelligence that builds in uncertainty
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/10/201019125537.htm
It's only as good as the methods and data it has been given. On its own, it doesn't know if information is missing, how much weight to give differing kinds of information or whether the data it draws on is incorrect or corrupted. It can't deal precisely with uncertainty or random events -- unless it learns how. Relying exclusively on data, as machine-learning models usually do, it does not leverage the knowledge experts have accumulated over years and physical models underpinning physical and chemical phenomena. It has been hard to teach the computer to organize and integrate information from widely different sources.
Now researchers at the University of Delaware and the University of Massachusetts-Amherst have published details of a new approach to artificial intelligence that builds uncertainty, error, physical laws, expert knowledge and missing data into its calculations and leads ultimately to much more trustworthy models. The new method provides guarantees typically lacking from AI models, showing how valuable -- or not -- the model can be for achieving the desired result.