My guest this week is Anh Nguyen, a PhD student at the University of Wyoming working in the Evolving AI lab. The episode discusses the paper Deep Neural Networks are Easily Fooled [pdf] by Anh Nguyen, Jason Yosinski, and Jeff Clune. It describes a process for creating images that a trained deep neural network will mis-classify. If you have a deep neural network that has been trained to recognize certain types of objects in images, these "fooling" images can be constructed in a way which the network will mis-classify them. To a human observer, these fooling images often have no resemblance whatsoever to the assigned label. Previous work had shown that some images which appear to be unrecognizable white noise images to us can fool a deep neural network. This paper extends the result showing abstract images of shapes and colors, many of which have form (just not the one the network thinks) can also trick the network.

This episode introduces a high level discussion on the topic of Data Provenance, with more MINI episodes to follow to get into specific topics. Thanks to listener Sara L who wrote in to point out the Data Skeptic Podcast has focused alot about using data to be skeptical, but not necessarily being skeptical of data.

Data Provenance is the concept of knowing the full origin of your dataset. Where did it come from? Who collected it? How as it collected? Does it combine independent sources or one singular source? What are the error bounds on the way it was measured? These are just some of the questions one should ask to understand their data. After all, if the antecedent of an argument is built on dubious grounds, the consequent of the argument is equally dubious.

For a more technical discussion than what we get into in this mini epiosode, I recommend A Survey of Data Provenance Techniques by authors Simmhan, Plale, and Gannon.

I had the change to speak with well known Sharon Hill (@idoubtit) for the first episode of 2015. We discuss a number of interesting topics including the contributions Doubtful News makes to getting scientific and skeptical information ranked highly in search results, sink holes, why earthquakes are hard to predict, and data collection about paranormal groups via the internet.