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The AI Misinformation Epidemic

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Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#221

Post by arjie »

digi_owl wrote: post #201
SkyMarshal wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because I'm genuinely in agreement with Peter Thiel's argument that technological progress is actually decelerating relative to how it was moving 60 years ago Is it possible we just covered most of the low-hanging fruit in the 1800s and 1900s, and now the only remaining discoveries that are really ground-breaking are the really difficult ones, hence the slower rate?

Very much so. More and more i feel that he PC and smartphone has just been about recreating the mainframe using smaller components. The laser may well have been the last really new thing to come about.

With enough work one can convince oneself that each 'discovery' or 'invention' is a trivial follow-up of existing technology. DNA sequencing is in the post-laser era. Can you build a convincing argument as to why it's not new but the laser is new?

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#222

Post by throw2016 »

The amount of glee at unemployment and disempowerment expressed during most AI discussions here is truly disturbing, especially given the nascent stage of things. The irony of laments about HIB and outsourcing then sit starkly.

It reveals not a genuine excitement about technology progress and a better world but a darker underbelly of a self obsessed and insular tech community composed seemingly of closet tinpots itching to climb up the food chain. How can this lead to any positive outcome?

Same old, only replaced by a new group. Technology can leap but humans mindsets remain stagnant around power and greed.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#223

Post by robotresearcher »

unityByFreedom wrote: post #99
robotresearcher wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps it was a greater achievement to get the first 10^4 people online than the next 10^9. More of the same-or-slightly-smaller. I certainly got more delta-value out of pre-web Internet (email, Usenet, chat) and Web 1.0 (online papers and libraries, nearly-free publishing) than Web 2.0 onwards (Facebook, etc). Maybe it's not accelerating constantly.

I think you're really underselling things like 3G data plans which are now worldwide. That didn't exist 10 years ago. Even just the widespread use of SMS has helped medical teams assess and treat diseases in remote areas. When people complain about some lack of technological advancements, it sounds to me like they're just not aware of what we have accomplished. And I am not surprised that Thiel is in this category. H…

No, I'm staggered by the wonderfulness of modern networks. It's just that taking the Internet to the masses is slightly less staggering to me than getting from POTS (analog telephone) to the Internet. And I do have some idea what is involved.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#224

Post by spitfire »

digi_owl wrote: post #201
SkyMarshal wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>because I'm genuinely in agreement with Peter Thiel's argument that technological progress is actually decelerating relative to how it was moving 60 years ago Is it possible we just covered most of the low-hanging fruit in the 1800s and 1900s, and now the only remaining discoveries that are really ground-breaking are the really difficult ones, hence the slower rate?

Very much so. More and more i feel that he PC and smartphone has just been about recreating the mainframe using smaller components. The laser may well have been the last really new thing to come about.

I've always thought - and described PC's as mini mainframes. Even the software we run on them is mainframe derived - Unix and VMS.

The mobile/tablet is truly the first "personal computer", which we've barely tapped yet. I am hopeful, but at the moment we haven't gone much beyond what we could do with very efficient punch card sorting.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#225

Post by romaniv »

deepnotderp wrote: post #218
romaniv wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alan Kay spoke about it length in many of his talks. For example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTAghAJcO1o Excellent video. I highly recommend everyone working in or with IT to see it. I think he is right. PCs and smartphone are mostly recreating thing from the past, and not the best things either. However, this isn't because we invented everything there is to invent. It has more to do with how research in computi…

Making things smaller and power efficient IS invention, it's what has driven so much tech progress. Even supercomputers are a power problem now...

You probably should watch that video. This is one of its core subject. Kay makes a valuable distinction between invention and innovation, and what you describe falls into the "innovation" bucket. It's incremental. Yes, our cellphones are more powerful than mainframes of the old, but do we utilize them to the same extent?

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#226

Post by jedharris »

ExactoKnight wrote: post #26

The AI and Singularity hype irks me, because I'm genuinely in agreement with Peter Thiel's argument that technological progress is actually decelerating relative to how it was moving 60 years ago once you look beyond the advancements we have experienced in information technology and finance.

What about genetic engineering? We can create new organisms by directly modifying genes, in fact we frequently do for drug production, etc. We can sequence genes and the cost is falling faster than Moore's law. We can introduce stem cells with different genes into the body (including brain) to cure genetic diseases. We'll be able to tweak genes in human zygotes soon.

Does this compare favorably to internal combustion or indoor plumbing? Seems to me that it does.

And AI is a huge force multiplier in all of these abilities.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#227

Post by AndrewKemendo »

erkkie wrote: post #77
AndrewKemendo wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Difficulty level 1: The only ML in there was some 1-line language translation feature they were consuming off Watson REST services for a tangential feature on their app Difficulty level 2: Self-trained CNN on a custom dataset using TensorFlow and changes to start/end layers on the NN Difficulty level 3: Custom rolled 12 layer CNN trained with with novel hand labeled data. How many people to you think know the differe…

Why should people be able to tell the difference vs the outcome of those products, unless someone (investors?) is specifically just buying into the AI hype itself? (in which case, this is nothing different from when everything was "social")

Differentiation.

Most off the shelf ML tools are not that powerful - and they don't make a difference in how you differentiate as a business. If you have a ML team and know how to build models from scratch with novel data, then you can iterate on your model and expand, something you can't do if you don't own the model.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#228

Post by claytonjy »

ilaksh wrote: post #161
wiricon wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Care to share links to those labs' websites/relevant papers? I'm a deep learning researcher, and I've been noticing this gap that you mentioned between the DL community and what everyone else in AI is doing, and think it might be worthwhile trying to bridge that gap.

Google for publications by Deep Mind, Ogma, Good AI, Open AI, Numenta, OpenCog, 'Towards Deep Developmental Learning', projects related to new DARPA program 'L2M'. Also search for projects labeled AGI.

I'm unfamiliar with most of those, but aren't Deep Mind and Open AI pretty standard sources of knowledge in the DL community these days? I say this as a practitioner who has read some things from both, and had the impression that while cutting-edge, they are both "traditional" DL-focused institutions at the moment, not so concerned with AGI.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#229

Post by cr0sh »

jacquesm wrote: post #129
thearn4 wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What were the technical buzzwords that companies used to signal hotness in the industry before the ML hype train (startup or not)? I know on the process & management side for large organizations, there's been a revolving door of Lean/Agile/6 Sigma/ISO 9000, each with their own set of certifications, colored belts, and army of advisors/consultants. I like the idea of always being retrospective and asking what can be i…

Web 2.0, Semantic web, cloud, async, big data... you could keep this up for quite a while.

I tend to think this whole "hype marketing" thing has been going on for a very long time; I can't quantify how long.

I do know that if you look at various technology marketing around the decade after the release of Capek's RUR (1920) - almost everything that was remotely mechanical or automatic or electronic was referred to as a "robot".

So it has been going on at least that long, and I suspect longer.

Re: The AI Misinformation Epidemic

#230

Post by eli_gottlieb »

akyu wrote: post #172
eli_gottlieb wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's still very unclear what, if anything, this algorithm has in common with how a human brain actually operates. Not very much at all. Most psychological evidence shows that human beings seem to operate off composable, hierarchical generative models and probabilistic inference. Deep neural networks are basically just huge continuous circuit approximators.

>composable, hierarchical generative models and probabilistic inference. Deep neural networks are basically just huge continuous circuit approximators. These two things are not mutually exclusive.

What sort of neural network implements human-style learning and inference?
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