  The classification of states of matter and their corresponding phase
transitions is a special kind of machine-learning task, where physical data
allow for the analysis of new algorithms, which have not been considered in the
general computer-science setting so far. Here we introduce an unsupervised
machine-learning scheme for detecting phase transitions with a pair of
discriminative cooperative networks (DCN). In this scheme, a guesser network
and a learner network cooperate to detect phase transitions from fully
unlabeled data. The new scheme is efficient enough for dealing with phase
diagrams in two-dimensional parameter spaces, where we can utilize an active
contour model -- the snake -- from computer vision to host the two networks.
The snake, with a DCN "brain", moves and learns actively in the parameter
space, and locates phase boundaries automatically.
