Machine Learning and Beyond

Machine learning is a highly effective technology that has found broad applications in science and technology. Behind it is a mathematical science that first defines the goals that need to be achieved if learning is to be successful. It goes on to study the most effective ways of achieving these goals, and also to characterize cases where effective learning is impossible. However, central as this study may be for cognition, it does not account for all of cognition. The question is whether one can build on the success of machine learning to address the broader goals of artificial intelligence. We regard reasoning as the other main component, and suggest that the central challenge is to unify learning and reasoning into a single framework.