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How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

cs.princeton.edu

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Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#41

Post by jacquesm »

Lots of AI is actually large numbers of humans working on small bits of problems that are beyond our ability to automate. Not infrequently these are passed off on the outside as 'ai' startups. There are some good examples too where the companies that use machine learning properly and to good effect. Interestingly they don't blab about it because it is their edge over the competition and often just knowing that something can be done is enough to inspire someone else to be able to copy it.

So here is my own theory on how to recognize AI snake oil: if it requires advertising it is probably fake, if it is very quiet and successful it is likely genuine.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#42

Post by tyri_kai_psomi »

dmix wrote: post #24
rasmi wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to indulge the troll, but Arvind Narayanan is an (associate) professor of CS at Princeton and is one of the foremost researchers in the field on topics of ML/data privacy and ethics [0]. His papers/talks/tweets regularly attract attention on HN [1]. That you're judging the talk based on which conferences the author hasn't published in says more about your ignorance of the STS field than it does about the author's…

It seems his main research focus is poking holes in popular tech, especially when he is the main author.

There are a lot of holes to poke, and not enough pokers.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#43

Post by sanchezdev »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #40
sanchezdev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically agree with this rule. I find that my colleagues who overly hype unsupervised approaches typically don't have much experience working on ML problems without labeled data. My suspicion of this comes from the fact that whenever I give a talk on ML I always have a wealth of personal experience to draw on for examples. My colleagues almost always reuse slides from projects they never worked on.

I'm a little surprised to see this sentiment. Some of the most important advances in the field have been unsupervised tasks: - OpenAI: Dota 2 (PPO), GPT-2... - NVidia: StyleGAN, BigGAN, ProGAN...

Those are certainly important advances, but they don't really apply to most business needs for AI or ML.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#44

Post by maxlamb »

buboard wrote: post #14
avip wrote: post #10

My company is sourcing AI from MTurk. It's actually cheaper than running fat GPU model training instances. The network learns fast and adapts well to changes in inputs. I envision the sticker "human inside" strapped on our algorithms.

You should emphasize that this is Organic AI. It's low carbon and overall greener.

I think simply OI (Organic Intelligence) would the more appropriate term since it's no longer artificial ;)

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#45

Post by zamubafoo »

sillysaurusx wrote: post #40
sanchezdev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I basically agree with this rule. I find that my colleagues who overly hype unsupervised approaches typically don't have much experience working on ML problems without labeled data. My suspicion of this comes from the fact that whenever I give a talk on ML I always have a wealth of personal experience to draw on for examples. My colleagues almost always reuse slides from projects they never worked on.

I'm a little surprised to see this sentiment. Some of the most important advances in the field have been unsupervised tasks: - OpenAI: Dota 2 (PPO), GPT-2... - NVidia: StyleGAN, BigGAN, ProGAN...

I would argue that GAN's by definition aren't unsupervised, they just aren't supervised by humans. Additionally, OpenAI's game stuff also has similar arguments against it.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#46

Post by avip »

scottlegrand2 wrote: post #35
buboard wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should emphasize that this is Organic AI. It's low carbon and overall greener.

20+ years ago I used to refer to this is as artificial artificial intelligence (AAI) specifically as part of a pitch to MGM for an MMORPG to run their non-player characters. Not surprisingly, it didn't catch on...

That was MTurk's slogan on launch.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#47

Post by MiroF »

sanchezdev wrote: post #43
sillysaurusx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised to see this sentiment. Some of the most important advances in the field have been unsupervised tasks: - OpenAI: Dota 2 (PPO), GPT-2... - NVidia: StyleGAN, BigGAN, ProGAN...

Those are certainly important advances, but they don't really apply to most business needs for AI or ML.

I work in the industry on NLP tasks. Unsupervised learning has been behind the largest developments in the last decade in the field.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#48

Post by MiroF »

zamubafoo wrote: post #45
sillysaurusx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised to see this sentiment. Some of the most important advances in the field have been unsupervised tasks: - OpenAI: Dota 2 (PPO), GPT-2... - NVidia: StyleGAN, BigGAN, ProGAN...

I would argue that GAN's by definition aren't unsupervised, they just aren't supervised by humans. Additionally, OpenAI's game stuff also has similar arguments against it.

> I would argue that GAN's by definition aren't unsupervised

You can define the terms how you want - but in terms of how they're understood in both industry and academia, you are incorrect.

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#49

Post by hajile »

SkyBelow wrote: post #38

What I dislike far more than the idea of using such systems to predict social outcome is that the usage of such systems is done behind closed doors. I would be much more willing to accept such systems if the law required any system to be fully accessible online, including the current neural network, how it was trained, and training data used to train it (if the training data cannot be shared online, then the neural n…

The "independent company" part doesn't work though. If Facebook comes up with anything useful, the US government walks in, grabs the data, then issues a gag order so nobody knows. It simply wouldn't matter that the government was officially restricted to "open AI".

Re: How to recognize AI snake oil [pdf]

#50

Post by Der_Einzige »

sanchezdev wrote: post #43
sillysaurusx wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a little surprised to see this sentiment. Some of the most important advances in the field have been unsupervised tasks: - OpenAI: Dota 2 (PPO), GPT-2... - NVidia: StyleGAN, BigGAN, ProGAN...

Those are certainly important advances, but they don't really apply to most business needs for AI or ML.

Echo the other commentator. Unsupervised techniques are the only reason NLP works as well as it does.
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