Jordan Thayer, PhD

AI is changing every facet of our lives, from the way we cook to the way we work. Customer service is the most important aspect of any business. It defines the relationship between business and customers. Like all aspects of work, AI is changing how we approach customer service. Full Automation? More Like Fool Automation […]

I read a lot. I read for pleasure, and I read for work. I read poetry, fiction, and graphic novels. I even read the occasional textbook on how laws around pornography give us a unique view into the changing social landscape of 19th century England. That one, by the way, is a real page turner. […]

One of the most useful skills I picked up during my Ph.D. studies was how to turn light refreshments into a whole meal.  The trick is to combine hunger and the ability to ignore shame for personal gain. Then one needs only spend an awful lot of time at the end of an event milling […]

Previously, we discussed how there is a large class of business problems that AI can address.  Here, we’re going to follow up that thought with a hypothetical case study. In particular, we’ll look at how AI could be part of a product for addressing elder care. When we hear elder care and artificial intelligence some remarkable […]

We often hear or read that artificial intelligence will change the world as we know it. This misses the mark; AI has changed the world that we live in forever. It isn’t some futuristic technology that will alter our lives someday. It’s a feature in products that we interact with today. Artificial intelligence isn’t a […]

We’ve discussed several applications of machine learning before. We teach a machine a concept from stored data so that it can: Identify problems with engines from telemetry data Identify digits from handwriting Identify sticky notes on a board Identify the winning team in DotA from team compositions The common thrust is that, using supervised learning, […]

I have a relative that frequently has medical problems. This despite the fact that he’s a healthy young man. His problem is that he has too many names. He’s James-Robert, but depending on whom you ask, you’ll hear him called: Jim Bob Robert James Jim-Bob He has five names at least, and that’s before considering […]

Heuristic search is a subfield of artificial intelligence.  It is the study of algorithms meant for general problem solving. The problems solved with heuristic search come from a variety of domains, including: Aligning genetic sequences Planning routes between two cities Scheduling elevators in a building Scheduling work orders in a machine shop These varried domains […]

Originally published here. The Goal Someone recently told me in passing that they wished they had a machine learning sandbox. I didn’t know what that was exactly, but I had a few ideas about what it might be. I wrote down some notes about what I thought a machine learning sandbox might do for someone, […]