Orchestrate all the Things Could machine learning and operations research lift each other up? Featuring Funartech CEO / Founder Nikolaj van Omme
Is deep learning really going to be able to do everything? Opinions on the potential of this opinion to prove true vary. Geoffrey Hinton, awarded for pioneering deep learning, is not entirely unbiased in so opining. However others, including Hinton's deep learning collaborator Yoshua Bengio, are looking to infuse deep learning with elements of a domain still under the radar: operations research.
Machine learning and its deep learning variety are practically household names by now. There is lots of hype around deep learning, as well as a growing number of applications. However, as applications of deep learning are proliferating, its limitations are also becoming better understood. Presumably that's the reason why Bengio turned his attention to operations research.
In 2020, Bengio and his collaborators surveyed recent attempts, both from the machine learning and operations research communities, at leveraging machine learning to solve combinatorial optimization problems. They advocate for pushing further the integration of machine learning and combinatorial optimization and detail a methodology to do so.
To this day, however, there is no publicly visible operations research renaissance to speak of, and commercial applications remain few compared to machine learning. Nikolaj van Omme and Funartech want to change that.