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AI winter is well on its way

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Re: AI winter is well on its way

#321

Post by dekhn »

zerostar07 wrote: post #312

An AI "winter" is a long period in which [edit: funding is cut because...] researchers are in disbelief about having a path to real intelligence. I think that is not the case at this time, because we have (or approaching) adequate tools to rationally dismiss that disbelief. The current AI "spring" has brought back the belief that connectionism may by the ultimate tool to explain the human brain. I mean you can't deny…

No, AI winter was when the AI people oversold the tech, then failed to deliver, and lost their funding. This is well documented in histories of the field.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#322

Post by jacksmith21006 »

nmca wrote: post #239
joe_the_user wrote: post #81

This is a deep, significant post (pardon pun etc). The author is clearly informed and takes a strong, historical view of the situation. Looking at what the really smart people who brought us this innovation have said and done lately is a good start imo (just one datum of course, but there are others in this interesting survey). Deepmind hasn't shown anything breathtaking since their Alpha Go zero. Another thing to co…

Moore's law (or at least, the diminishing one) is not relevant here because these are not single threaded programs. Google put 8x on their TPUv2 -> v3 upgrade; parallel matrix multiplies at reduced precision are a long way away from any theoretical limits, as I understand it.

Totally agree but why on earth down voted?

The first generation TPUs used 65536 very simple cores.

In the end you have so many transistors you can fit and there are options on how to arrange and use.

You might support very complex instructions and data types and then four cores. Or you might only support 8 bit ints, very, very simple instructions and use 65536 cores.

In the end what matters is the joules to get something done.

We can clearly see that we have big improvements by using new processor architectures.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#323

Post by nl »

AstralStorm wrote: post #224
jcelerier wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What decision-making problems are there, in the same class, that I'd pay for? an awful lot of graph and optimization problems. See for instance some examples in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A*_search_algorithm

Perfect information problem solving is not interesting anymore. Did they manage to extend it to games with hidden and imperfect information? (Say, chess with fog of war also known as Dark Chess. Phantom Go. Pathfinding equivalent would be an incremental search.) Edit: I see they are working on it, predictive state memory paper (MERLIN) is promising but not there yet.

There’s plenty of interesting work on poker bots.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#324

Post by dekhn »

I'm a scientist from a field outside ML who knows that ML can contribute to science. But I'm also really sad to see false claims in papers. For example, a good scientist can read an ML paper, see claims of 99% accuracy, and then probe further to figure out what the claims really mean. I do that a lot, and I find that accuracy inflation and careless mismanagement of data mars most "sexy" ML papers. To me, that's what's going to lead to a new AI winter.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#325

Post by zerostar07 »

dekhn wrote: post #321
zerostar07 wrote: post #312

An AI "winter" is a long period in which [edit: funding is cut because...] researchers are in disbelief about having a path to real intelligence. I think that is not the case at this time, because we have (or approaching) adequate tools to rationally dismiss that disbelief. The current AI "spring" has brought back the belief that connectionism may by the ultimate tool to explain the human brain. I mean you can't deny…

No, AI winter was when the AI people oversold the tech, then failed to deliver, and lost their funding. This is well documented in histories of the field.

I think the scientific pessimism preceded the funding cuts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_winter

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#326

Post by oldgradstudent »

tim333 wrote: post #127

This seems over negative. Just the opening argument, that companies were saying "that fully self driving car was very close" but "this narrative begins to crack" Yet here they are self driving https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqRMTWqhwzM&feature=youtu.be and you should be able to hail one as a cab this year https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/05/09/self_driving_taxis_...

The video is PR.

So far, no independent journalist or reviewer was allowed to test the system with the exception of a few tightly controlled rides.

Don't take it too seriously.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#327

Post by Scea91 »

pfisch wrote: post #185
akvadrako wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI taking over is the biggest threat facing humanity, but I don't think Hawking ever claimed it was imminent; it's likely 1000+ years away. It should be obvious why a superior intelligence is something dangerous.

"it's likely 1000+ years away." That seems like a pretty high number when you consider the exponential rate of technological advancement. 1000 years in the future is probably going to be completely unrecognizable to us given the current rate of change in society/tech.

True exponentials exist very rarely. What we are used to call exponential is often at most quadratic and even then the trend usually exists only for some limited time window.

I wouldn't dare to make prediction about mankind 1000 years from now based on a relatively short time window of technological growth. There are many huge obstacles in the way.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#328

Post by jacksmith21006 »

visarga wrote: post #306

AI winter is not "on its way". There is AI hype and anti-AI hype, and then there is actual practice. This article is anti-AI hype, just as bad as its opposite. In practice there are tons of useful applications. We haven't even begun to apply ML and DL to all the problems laying around us, some of which are quite accessible and impactful. The hype cycle will pass with time, when we learn to align our expectations with…

I think you will see the "hype" cycle last for a very, very long time.

It is a very different thing when the computer can start doing things that only humans could do.

Look at all the drama after Google did the Duplex demo.

We have barely even got started with self driving cars.

But ultimately it is about money and the profits that can be made from AI/ML are just huge. So that will fuel the hype.

But also AI changes the calculus of companies competing. Before a product was sold and deteriorate over time.

Now a product is sold and gets better over time. Increasing moats and making it much more difficult to compete. So AI becomes a far more valuable thing than maybe we ever had in the past.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#329

Post by jacksmith21006 »

felippee wrote: post #15
nopinsight wrote: post #14

A different take by Google’s cofounder, Sergey Brin, in his most recent Founders’ Letter to investors: “The new spring in artificial intelligence is the most significant development in computing in my lifetime.” He listed many examples below the quote. “understand images in Google Photos; enable Waymo cars to recognize and distinguish objects safely; significantly improve sound and camera quality in our hardware; und…

Hi, author here: Well first off: letters to investors are among the most biased pieces of writing in existence. Second: I'm not saying connectionism did not succeed in many areas! I'm a connectionist by heart! I love connectionism! But that being said there is disconnect between the expectations and reality. And it is huge. And it is particularly visible in autonomous driving. And it is not limited to media or CEO's,…

" letters to investors are among the most biased pieces of writing in existence. "

Maybe true but they are words that are about things which are either true or not true. Has nothing to do where the words were shared. Saying they are on an investment letter so not relevant seems very short sighted.

But just looking at the last 12 months it is folly to say we are moving to a AI winter. Things are just flying.

Look at self driving cars without safety drivers or look at something like Google Duplex but there are so many other examples.

Re: AI winter is well on its way

#330

Post by edanm »

Bromskloss wrote: post #319

Oh, I thought "AI winter" would refer to a state of ruin after AI had come into existence and destroyed everything, analogous to nuclear winter.

AI Winter is a very well-known term in the industry referring to a general lack of funding of AI research, after the last time AI was overhyped.
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