As part of the Mathematics Colloquium, Prof Dr Rupert Klein (FU Berlin, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize 2003, Chair of the Society Gesellschaft für Mathematische Forschung Oberwolfach) will give a lecture on the topic: "Thoughts on Machine Learning".

Topic: "Thoughts on Machine Learning".

Date: 26 February 2026 at 4 pm s.t.
Location: Helmholtzstrasse18, 2.20

Abstract:

Techniques of machine learning (ML) find a rapidly increasing range of applications touching upon social, economic, and technological aspects of everyday life. They are also being used with great enthusiasm to fill in gaps in our scientific knowledge by data-based modelling approaches. I have followed these developments for a while with interest, concern, and mounting disappointment. When these technologies are employed to take over decisive functionality in safety-critical applications, we would like to know exactly how to guarantee their compliance with pre-defined guardrails and limitations. Moreover, when they are utilized as building blocks in scientific research, it would violate scientific standards -in my opinion- if these building blocks were used without a throrough understanding of their functionality, including inaccuracies, uncertainties, and other pitfalls. In this context, I will juxtapose (a subset of) deep neural network methods with the family of entropy-optimal Sparse Probabilistic Approximation (sSPA) techniques developed recently by Illia Horenko (RPTU Kaiserslautern-Landau) and colleagues.