131–140 of 930 posts
This is a very artfully written statement. It avoids the most more devastating headline of “John Carmack Stepping Down”. (Yes, going part-time isn’t the same as leaving entirely, but still).
For anybody who hasn't played an untethered VR experience, I highly recommend it. It makes a world of difference with games like Echo combat and Beatsaber. Tons of fun. It reminds me of the first time I played wii bowling.
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> He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). You must be joking, right? I'm as much of a Carmack fan as anyone here, but overstating the skills of one personal hero does no good to anyone.
To be fair, a whole uninterrupted week of highly focussed work can get you pretty far (considering that you have the necessary background, which Carmack has, i.e. related to linear algebra, stats, programming, etc.)
This doesn't surprise me at all. He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). (edit: I'm not claiming he's a field expert in a week guys, just that he can probably learn the basics pretty fast, especially given ML tech shares many base maths with graphics) As recent as his last Oculus Connect keynote, he exto…
> He went on a week long cabin-in-the-middle-of-nowhere trip about a year ago to dive in to AI (that's all this guy needs to become pretty damn proficient). You must be joking, right? I'm as much of a Carmack fan as anyone here, but overstating the skills of one personal hero does no good to anyone.
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To be fair, a whole uninterrupted week of highly focussed work can get you pretty far (considering that you have the necessary background, which Carmack has, i.e. related to linear algebra, stats, programming, etc.)
Yes, but let's not assume the the hundreds of other scientists in the field have just been twiddling their thumbs the whole time. It is preposterous to assume that someone largely new to a highly specialized field can somehow start pushing the envelope within a week. Yes, JC is nothing short of brilliant, but these sort of assumptions just set him up to disappoint and is also highly unfair to all the other hardworkin…
Figuring out the basics of the math and how to use whatever tools they use at FB is doable in a week.
I think an AGI will end up being like an AI that plays the Sims except we're the Sims and it's optimizing for our happiness probably by remotely monitoring our opioid receptor activation and some parameters of general health.
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why would being born in the current century preclude one from making fundamental contributions? You are making a common mistake of assuming that just because someone is good at something like programing computers the same skill would translate identically to a completely different domain. If anything he is lucky to have been born in an era where his skill of programming computers could be put to use - otherwise his t…
He's "good at programming" like Galileo was "good with telescopes." Computers, telescopes, hammers, they're all just tools, and Carmack has proven himself as far more than just a handyman. He's the kind of person where, if you show him what you're working on and he doesn't understand it, you probably need to go back to the drawing board.
For what is worth computers are unique tools unlike any other tool that mankind has invented before - thus it is much harder to tell what other jobs would a good programmer excel at.
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Where and how are you working on AGI? Are you at opencog or Cyx?
I'm not a big player on the field. I'm specialized in semantic parsing and argument checking. I'm the first to my knowledge to have made a syllogism (and more) checker for English. Also, I have allowed researchers to beat the state of the art on constituency and dependency parsing (but simply by sharing knowledge of the state of the art to other researchers). I do this on my free time so I'm not productive, but I hav…
Either what you actually mean by "syllogism checker" is extremely specific and unpractical, or this is 100% BS.
he is 49 this year, considered as one of the most genius programmer on earth. There are professors still doing real work at 90+ year old(yes, the UT professor goodenough for Nobel prize), John has a long way ahead, best luck!
i've heard he was pretty good, i didn't realize he was this widely respected and admired. I remember him for that fast inverse square root hack but that's about it.