How AI Works

3CLASSICAL MODELS: OLD-SCHOOL MACHINE LEARNING

Beginning piano students don’t start with Liszt’s “La Campanella,” but “Mary Had a Little Lamb” or “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star.” The simpler pieces contain the basics of playing the piano, and mastering the basics allows students to progress over time. This principle holds in most areas of study, including artificial intelligence.

To reach our ultimate goal of understanding modern AI, we must begin in the “simpler” world of classical machine learning. What holds for the classical models is generally true for more advanced neural networks. This chapter explores three classical models: nearest neighbors, ...