{"version":1,"type":"rich","provider_name":"Libsyn","provider_url":"https:\/\/www.libsyn.com","height":90,"width":600,"title":"The Bitter Lesson: The history of reinforcement learning","description":"I've been trying to understand how machine learning actually works. Not use it,&amp;nbsp;understand it, down to the ifs and loops. How does a program built out of plain conditionals get better on its own? So late one night I sent Don a paper. Three words in the title: reward is enough. The claim is that all of intelligence, the whole thing, comes down to a system maximizing a reward. Don thought that was far too reductive. I wanted to pull it apart and see if it held up.  We backed up through the history to find out how far &quot;reward is enough&quot; really goes: B.F. Skinner training pigeons, a backgammon program that taught itself, the Go move no human would have played. It's a story about machine learning, and what that leaves for the rest of us who&amp;nbsp;still do it by hand.   Episode Page Support The Show Subscribe To The Podcast Join The Newsletter  &amp;nbsp; ","author_name":"CoRecursive: Coding Stories","author_url":"http:\/\/corecursive.com","html":"<iframe title=\"Libsyn Player\" style=\"border: none\" src=\"\/\/html5-player.libsyn.com\/embed\/episode\/id\/41633955\/height\/90\/theme\/custom\/thumbnail\/yes\/direction\/forward\/render-playlist\/no\/custom-color\/88AA3C\/\" height=\"90\" width=\"600\" scrolling=\"no\"  allowfullscreen webkitallowfullscreen mozallowfullscreen oallowfullscreen msallowfullscreen><\/iframe>","thumbnail_url":"https:\/\/assets.libsyn.com\/secure\/item\/41633955"}