My story as a self-taught AI researcher
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My story as a self-taught AI researcher
1–10 of 176 posts
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#2This is a really good time to be a Independent Scientist (aka Gentleman scientist) in this field because how nascent deep learning and similar techniques are. It requires a lot of trial and error and time/cost investment to bring the AI techniques to the masses.
The FAANGs are trying to hire all the top talent (including Emil who wrote the post) but I believe these independent researchers will be the one finding new opportunities to make AI useful in the real world (like colorizing b&w photos, create website code from mockups).
The biggest challenge I see for these folks is the access to high quality data. There is a reason Google is releasing so many ML models in production compared to smaller companies. Bridging the data gap requires effort from the community to build high quality open source datasets for common applications.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#3This is a really good time to be a Independent Scientist (aka Gentleman scientist) in this field because how nascent deep learning and similar techniques are. It requires a lot of trial and error and time/cost investment to bring the AI techniques to the masses. The FAANGs are trying to hire all the top talent (including Emil who wrote the post) but I believe these independent researchers will be the one finding new…
On the other hand, the lack of data for independent researchers may encourage the development of low data techniques which is much more exciting in the long term since humans are able to learn with much less data than required by most machine learning techniques
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#4This is a really good time to be a Independent Scientist (aka Gentleman scientist) in this field because how nascent deep learning and similar techniques are. It requires a lot of trial and error and time/cost investment to bring the AI techniques to the masses. The FAANGs are trying to hire all the top talent (including Emil who wrote the post) but I believe these independent researchers will be the one finding new…
On the other hand, the lack of data for independent researchers may encourage the development of low data techniques which is much more exciting in the long term since humans are able to learn with much less data than required by most machine learning techniques
Low data techniques are just another name for algorithms/equations. Dijstras algorithm required 0 training graphs to make.
Any other kind of method will get killed by low statistical information in the data (can't get blood from a stone)
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#5This is a really good time to be a Independent Scientist (aka Gentleman scientist) in this field because how nascent deep learning and similar techniques are. It requires a lot of trial and error and time/cost investment to bring the AI techniques to the masses. The FAANGs are trying to hire all the top talent (including Emil who wrote the post) but I believe these independent researchers will be the one finding new…
On the other hand, the lack of data for independent researchers may encourage the development of low data techniques which is much more exciting in the long term since humans are able to learn with much less data than required by most machine learning techniques
Arguably humans have a lifetime of data which was used to develop a model of the world that is amazingly efficient at interpreting new data.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#6"Many are realizing that education is a zero-sum credential game."
Can this silly meme die already? Maybe it's understandable coming from an economist who values education for no other reason than it's economic effects, but it's strange coming from someone who clearly understands the value of personal development.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#7"Many are realizing that education is a zero-sum credential game." Can this silly meme die already? Maybe it's understandable coming from an economist who values education for no other reason than it's economic effects, but it's strange coming from someone who clearly understands the value of personal development.
It is pretty strange even from an economist really - they of all people should be able to understand and articulate the difference between signaling value and direct utility value of a given good or service.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#8The thing that disappoints me about the aspirations of being a researcher is that the goal is to get paid to study AI, not solve real-world problems.
I would rather build a small company by solving a real problem than work for a big company spinning my wheels.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#9Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the other hand, the lack of data for independent researchers may encourage the development of low data techniques which is much more exciting in the long term since humans are able to learn with much less data than required by most machine learning techniques
Low data techniques are just another name for algorithms/equations. Dijstras algorithm required 0 training graphs to make. Any other kind of method will get killed by low statistical information in the data (can't get blood from a stone)
Agree with your first statement and disagree with your second; I don’t think the former implies the latter.
I think there’s a lot of room to be clever with encoding domain-specific inductive biases into models/algorithms, such that they can perform fast+robust inference. Exploiting this trade off as a design parameter to be tuned, rather than sitting at one of the two extremes is potentially going to generate a lot of value. And this is highly under-appreciated currently since most people are obsessed with “data”. I’m willing to bet that this will become big in a few years when the current AI hype machine falters, and will serve as a huge competitive advantage.
Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher
#10"Many are realizing that education is a zero-sum credential game." Can this silly meme die already? Maybe it's understandable coming from an economist who values education for no other reason than it's economic effects, but it's strange coming from someone who clearly understands the value of personal development.
It is pretty strange even from an economist really - they of all people should be able to understand and articulate the difference between signaling value and direct utility value of a given good or service.
Economists have been debating the skills vs signaling value of education, especially since Bryan Caplan released his book The Case Against Education. If you want to get a smattering of opinion on the issue the book's reviews and dicussionsn would be a good starting point.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Case_Against_Education#Rev...
Bryan Caplan back and forth with Noah Smith on the book: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2015/04/educational_sig_1.h...
Bryan Caplan back and forth with Bill Dickens on the book: https://www.econlib.org/archives/2010/08/education_and_s.htm...