It's amazing to see deep learning blast through all the benchmarks, for example in computer vision, over the last couple of years. At the same time something starts to feel off about having all these single-use asymmetric feedforward networks solving their own little task. Being trained in one direction, then used in the other, then thrown away. Maybe being chained together for a more complex task, but that seems to…
A lot of the RAM, for instance, is DDR2 and usually a measly 1gb apiece. They take up the exact same amount of space as RAM with 4gb apiece or more. I don’t know entirely why I still have them. Now that I’m doing physical computing/IoT development, Im seeing how pointless it is to have a bunch of desktops/laptops when I can get much more done - conveniently I might add - with a teeny tiny RedBear microcontroller.
I think an inherent feature of technology is having to get used to the idea that things age and die much faster than other products. Whether that’s physical hardware or trained neural networks, there comes a point when we just have to let go.