Machine Learning 101

What will our robot overlords be really good at? It’s a question we spend a LOT of time thinking about. To figure it out, we decided to teach an iPhone to play pinball with machine learning. We iterated through several approaches from supervised learning to reinforcement learning to build models that rack up high scores.

These models leverage the CoreML framework recently made available by Apple and enable a single iPhone to play real pinball all by itself!

Recently the Brooklyn Swift Developers dropped by our offices to see one of the pinball machines in action. Our Technical Director Quinn McHenry did a short intro to the basics of machine learning possible on iOS devices using CoreML, covering sensory information, image classification, natural language processing, and more.

Questions? Email observatory@smallplanet.com. Or you can find Quinn loitering with intent on Twitter (http://www.twitter.com/qmchenry) and Github (http://www.github.com/qmchenry).