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The Limitations of Deep Learning

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21–30 of 296 posts

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#21
post #6
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

Well said. It's just curve fitting.

Is what you do not "just curve fitting"?

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#22
post #8
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

Perhaps the problem simply lies in calling them neural networks.

As well as the title "artificial intelligence".

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#23
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

It isn't anthropomorphizing. There are undeniable architectural similarities between ANN's and biological neural networks. We don't understand either very well yet but the parts we do understand have led to a lot of cross pollination. I don't think computational intelligence will ever match biological networks detail by detail due to the different substrates and resource usage tradeoffs, and they don't need to match.…

This is exactly my point - the danger of "anthropomorphization" lies in taking the brain analogy too far. That is, there shouldn't necessarily be a link between research in neuroscience and advances that make deep learning models more accurate. The tasks are completely different (human learning vs. minimizing a loss function), and it's important for researchers in both fields - neuroscience and AI - to keep that in mind.

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#24

I'm excited to hear about how we bring about abstraction. I was wondering how a NN would go about discovering F = ma and the laws of motion. As far as I can tell, it has a lot of similarities to how humans would do it. You'd roll balls down slopes like in high school and get a lot of data. And from that you'd find there's a straight line model in there if you do some simple transformations. But how would you come to…

You can self train, like AlphaGo or that pong playing thing. As for the aesthetics part, there are theories on what aesthetics is, and part of it has to do with parsimony. Machines can certain constrain themselves on that.

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#25
People doing empirical experiments cannot claim to know the limits of their experimental apparatus.

While the design process of deep networks remains founded in trial and error, and there are no convergence theorems and approximation guarantees, no one can be sure what deep learning can do, and what it could never do.

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#26
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

[deleted]

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#27
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

[deleted]

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#28
Programmers contemplating the automation of programming:

"To lift some of these limitations and start competing with human brains, we need to move away from straightforward input-to-output mappings, and on to reasoning and abstraction. A likely appropriate substrate for abstract modeling of various situations and concepts is that of computer programs. We have said before (Note: in Deep Learning with Python) that machine learning models could be defined as "learnable programs"; currently we can only learn programs that belong to a very narrow and specific subset of all possible programs. But what if we could learn any program, in a modular and reusable way? Let's see in the next post what the road ahead may look like."

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#29
post #12
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps the problem simply lies in calling them neural networks.

This terminology goes back to McCulloch and Pitts in 1943, who said they were making an analogy or model based on the behavior of biological neurons. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_neuron#History There are many things that are inexact about this analogy or model, and many of them were known to be inexact in 1943, but that was the direct inspiration. Apparently there are lots of different mathematical models…

turns out it's very hard to model a thing that we don't know how it actually works

Re: The Limitations of Deep Learning

#30
post #5

As someone primarily interested in interpretation of deep models, I strongly resonate with this warning against anthropomorphization of neural networks. Deep learning isn't special; deep models tend to be more accurate than other methods, but fundamentally they aren't much closer to working like the human brain than e.g. gradient boosting models. I think a lot of the issue stems from layman explanations of neural net…

I don't have ML or deep learning background (no Masters or PhD), adding comment from experience with backtesting trading systems. We will collect market data and design algorithms that seem to produce the kind of outcomes we want. Then test on some other data sets which the algorithms have never been applied on. Many iterations later, you can get a decent profitable algorithm. And if the 'holy grail' algo is run in market long enough, eventually there will be severe drawdown and going bust. The quality of the algo and I assume the deep learning model lies in the quality (breadth and depth) of the data, and how honest with himself the person choose to model it. There will be time and again new 'black swan' or edge events happening (remember LTCM), because using machine learning is like using the past to predict the future.

I guess as long as the users' expectations are correct it can be useful in some very specific areas. Referencing the AlphaGo game last year, I was a Go player for more than a decade. But yet AlphaGo's weird move inspires new insights that break the conventional structure / thinking-framework of a Go player. From that angle, I do think that even though DL is somewhat a blackbox, humans can pick up new insights because it explores areas which are normally ridiculous to a human with 'common sense' to explore.

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