Ronald J. Williams

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Ronald J. Williams (1945 in California - February 16, 2024 in Framingham Massachusetts) [1] is professor of computer science at Northeastern University, and one of the pioneers of neural networks. He co-authored a paper on the backpropagation algorithm which triggered a boom in neural network research. [2] He also made fundamental contributions to the fields of recurrent neural networks [3] [4] and reinforcement learning. [5] Together with Wenxu Tong and Mary Jo Ondrechen he developed Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL), a machine learning method used in the prediction of active amino acids in protein structures. POOL is a maximum likelihood method with a monotonicity constraint and is a general predictor of properties that depend monotonically on the input features. [6]

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<span class="mw-page-title-main">Neural network (machine learning)</span> Computational model used in machine learning, based on connected, hierarchical functions

In machine learning, a neural network is a model inspired by the structure and function of biological neural networks in animal brains.

Reinforcement learning (RL) is an interdisciplinary area of machine learning and optimal control concerned with how an intelligent agent ought to take actions in a dynamic environment in order to maximize the cumulative reward. Reinforcement learning is one of three basic machine learning paradigms, alongside supervised learning and unsupervised learning.

Neuroevolution, or neuro-evolution, is a form of artificial intelligence that uses evolutionary algorithms to generate artificial neural networks (ANN), parameters, and rules. It is most commonly applied in artificial life, general game playing and evolutionary robotics. The main benefit is that neuroevolution can be applied more widely than supervised learning algorithms, which require a syllabus of correct input-output pairs. In contrast, neuroevolution requires only a measure of a network's performance at a task. For example, the outcome of a game can be easily measured without providing labeled examples of desired strategies. Neuroevolution is commonly used as part of the reinforcement learning paradigm, and it can be contrasted with conventional deep learning techniques that use backpropagation with a fixed topology.

Stochastic gradient descent is an iterative method for optimizing an objective function with suitable smoothness properties. It can be regarded as a stochastic approximation of gradient descent optimization, since it replaces the actual gradient by an estimate thereof. Especially in high-dimensional optimization problems this reduces the very high computational burden, achieving faster iterations in exchange for a lower convergence rate.

In machine learning, backpropagation is a gradient estimation method used to train neural network models. The gradient estimate is used by the optimization algorithm to compute the network parameter updates.

A recurrent neural network (RNN) is one of the two broad types of artificial neural network, characterized by direction of the flow of information between its layers. In contrast to the uni-directional feedforward neural network, it is a bi-directional artificial neural network, meaning that it allows the output from some nodes to affect subsequent input to the same nodes. Their ability to use internal state (memory) to process arbitrary sequences of inputs makes them applicable to tasks such as unsegmented, connected handwriting recognition or speech recognition. The term "recurrent neural network" is used to refer to the class of networks with an infinite impulse response, whereas "convolutional neural network" refers to the class of finite impulse response. Both classes of networks exhibit temporal dynamic behavior. A finite impulse recurrent network is a directed acyclic graph that can be unrolled and replaced with a strictly feedforward neural network, while an infinite impulse recurrent network is a directed cyclic graph that cannot be unrolled.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Feedforward neural network</span> One of two broad types of artificial neural network

A feedforward neural network (FNN) is one of the two broad types of artificial neural network, characterized by direction of the flow of information between its layers. Its flow is uni-directional, meaning that the information in the model flows in only one direction—forward—from the input nodes, through the hidden nodes and to the output nodes, without any cycles or loops, in contrast to recurrent neural networks, which have a bi-directional flow. Modern feedforward networks are trained using the backpropagation method and are colloquially referred to as the "vanilla" neural networks.

Meta-learning is a subfield of machine learning where automatic learning algorithms are applied to metadata about machine learning experiments. As of 2017, the term had not found a standard interpretation, however the main goal is to use such metadata to understand how automatic learning can become flexible in solving learning problems, hence to improve the performance of existing learning algorithms or to learn (induce) the learning algorithm itself, hence the alternative term learning to learn.

The random neural network (RNN) is a mathematical representation of an interconnected network of neurons or cells which exchange spiking signals. It was invented by Erol Gelenbe and is linked to the G-network model of queueing networks as well as to Gene Regulatory Network models. Each cell state is represented by an integer whose value rises when the cell receives an excitatory spike and drops when it receives an inhibitory spike. The spikes can originate outside the network itself, or they can come from other cells in the networks. Cells whose internal excitatory state has a positive value are allowed to send out spikes of either kind to other cells in the network according to specific cell-dependent spiking rates. The model has a mathematical solution in steady-state which provides the joint probability distribution of the network in terms of the individual probabilities that each cell is excited and able to send out spikes. Computing this solution is based on solving a set of non-linear algebraic equations whose parameters are related to the spiking rates of individual cells and their connectivity to other cells, as well as the arrival rates of spikes from outside the network. The RNN is a recurrent model, i.e. a neural network that is allowed to have complex feedback loops.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Echo state network</span> Type of reservoir computer

An echo state network (ESN) is a type of reservoir computer that uses a recurrent neural network with a sparsely connected hidden layer. The connectivity and weights of hidden neurons are fixed and randomly assigned. The weights of output neurons can be learned so that the network can produce or reproduce specific temporal patterns. The main interest of this network is that although its behavior is non-linear, the only weights that are modified during training are for the synapses that connect the hidden neurons to output neurons. Thus, the error function is quadratic with respect to the parameter vector and can be differentiated easily to a linear system.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Long short-term memory</span> Artificial recurrent neural network architecture used in deep learning

Long short-term memory (LSTM) is a type of recurrent neural network (RNN) aimed at dealing with the vanishing gradient problem present in traditional RNNs. Its relative insensitivity to gap length is its advantage over other RNNs, hidden Markov models and other sequence learning methods. It aims to provide a short-term memory for RNN that can last thousands of timesteps, thus "long short-term memory". It is applicable to classification, processing and predicting data based on time series, such as in handwriting, speech recognition, machine translation, speech activity detection, robot control, video games, and healthcare.

There are many types of artificial neural networks (ANN).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Jo Ondrechen</span> American chemist and educator

Mary Jo Ondrechen is an American chemist, educator, researcher, community leader and activist. She serves as Professor of Chemistry and Chemical Biology and Principal Investigator of the Computational Biology Research Group at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts.

The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to machine learning:

Machine learning control (MLC) is a subfield of machine learning, intelligent control and control theory which solves optimal control problems with methods of machine learning. Key applications are complex nonlinear systems for which linear control theory methods are not applicable.

In machine learning, hyperparameter optimization or tuning is the problem of choosing a set of optimal hyperparameters for a learning algorithm. A hyperparameter is a parameter whose value is used to control the learning process.

Deep reinforcement learning is a subfield of machine learning that combines reinforcement learning (RL) and deep learning. RL considers the problem of a computational agent learning to make decisions by trial and error. Deep RL incorporates deep learning into the solution, allowing agents to make decisions from unstructured input data without manual engineering of the state space. Deep RL algorithms are able to take in very large inputs and decide what actions to perform to optimize an objective. Deep reinforcement learning has been used for a diverse set of applications including but not limited to robotics, video games, natural language processing, computer vision, education, transportation, finance and healthcare.

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) are models created using machine learning to perform a number of tasks. Their creation was inspired by neural circuitry. While some of the computational implementations ANNs relate to earlier discoveries in mathematics, the first implementation of ANNs was by psychologist Frank Rosenblatt, who developed the perceptron. Little research was conducted on ANNs in the 1970s and 1980s, with the AAAI calling that period an "AI winter".

Teacher forcing is an algorithm for training the weights of recurrent neural networks (RNNs). It involves feeding observed sequence values back into the RNN after each step, thus forcing the RNN to stay close to the ground-truth sequence.

Theoretical Microscopic Anomalous Titration Curve Shapes (THEMATICS) is a computational method for predicting the biochemically active amino acids in a protein three-dimensional structure.

References

  1. Donaghy, Roger (2024-03-05). "A tribute to Ron Williams, Khoury professor and machine learning pioneer". Khoury College of Computer Sciences. Retrieved 2024-06-25.
  2. David E. Rumelhart, Geoffrey E. Hinton und Ronald J. Williams. Learning representations by back-propagating errors., Nature (London) 323, S. 533-536
  3. Williams, R. J. and Zipser, D. (1989). A learning algorithm for continually running fully recurrent neural networks. Neural Computation, 1, 270-280.
  4. R. J. Williams and D. Zipser. Gradient-based learning algorithms for recurrent networks and their computational complexity. In Back-propagation: Theory, Architectures and Applications. Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum, 1994.
  5. Williams, R. J. (1992). Simple statistical gradient-following algorithms for connectionist reinforcement learning. Machine Learning, 8, 229-256.
  6. W. Tong, Y. Wei, L.F. Murga, M.J. Ondrechen, and R.J. Williams (2009). Partial Order Optimum Likelihood (POOL): Maximum Likelihood Prediction of Active Site Residues Using 3D Structure and Sequence Properties. PLoS Computational Biology, 5(1): e1000266.