Blog: Programming Regret for Google

Programming Regret for Google
American Friends of Tel Aviv University (04/13/11)

Tel Aviv University researchers recently launched a project aimed at developing new algorithms that will help computers minimize the distance between a desired outcome and the actual outcome, or what Tel Aviv professor Yishay Mansour calls regret. Google plans to fund the research, which is on the cutting edge of computer science and game theory. "If the servers and routing systems of the Internet could see and evaluate all the relevant variables in advance, they could more efficiently prioritize server resource requests, load documents, and route visitors to an Internet site, for instance," Mansour says. His algorithm, which is based on machine learning, minimizes the amount of virtual regret a computer might experience. "Compared to human beings, help systems can much more quickly process all the available information to estimate the future as events unfold--whether it's a bidding war on an online auction site, a sudden spike of traffic to a media Web site, or demand for an online product," Mansour says.

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