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A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

theregister.co.uk

11–20 of 197 posts

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#12
I never understood Kaggle. Most competitions don't require code to be submitted, just predictions to be made on a test set with missing labels. So, you don't even need to apply machine learning and I'd bet money that lots of winners don't and label by hand or outsource. I don't understand the fascination and appeal of these so-called "grandmasters".

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#13

I remember reading about this on Twitter because of a reply from h2o.ai account. https://twitter.com/ppleskov/status/1215983188876709888?s=19 The person was originally employed at h2o.ai and as a consequence of this was fired. Not sure if that was completely appropriate. Wasn't this a personal participation? Or are there "company teams" on Kaggle ?

> Not sure if that was completely appropriate.

He has only been at h20 for a few months.

He was almost certainly hired at least in part because of his participation in the contest.

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#14
post #5

> " For me, it was never about the money but rather about the Kaggle points " Accumulated integer counts that represent social value and/or standing encourage destructive behavior.

It’s so fascinating to see how easily a human brain can be hijacked by status. I wonder if there’s a way to harness that power for improving individual performance...

Napoleon Bonaparte: “Give me enough medals and I'll win you any war”

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#15

> " For me, it was never about the money but rather about the Kaggle points " Accumulated integer counts that represent social value and/or standing encourage destructive behavior.

...he said, and then refreshed HN.

Propose HN: 'Countless' experiment – hiding all karmic integers: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19745267

Perhaps someday we'll get a week without them.

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#16

I never understood Kaggle. Most competitions don't require code to be submitted, just predictions to be made on a test set with missing labels. So, you don't even need to apply machine learning and I'd bet money that lots of winners don't and label by hand or outsource. I don't understand the fascination and appeal of these so-called "grandmasters".

Without very careful contest design, the best performers are obviously going to be over-fitting. Especially if the entire distribution is public. That's exactly what this team did.

This is true of academic contests in general, btw, even without cheating. They stop being interesting/fun/good signals as soon as people start treating them as an independent skill set. Comparing performance on chess games for the first N games between two new players might be a good signal for some general intellectual capabilities. Comparing experienced players against one another is mostly just testing who's spent more time learning about chess.

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#18

I remember reading about this on Twitter because of a reply from h2o.ai account. https://twitter.com/ppleskov/status/1215983188876709888?s=19 The person was originally employed at h2o.ai and as a consequence of this was fired. Not sure if that was completely appropriate. Wasn't this a personal participation? Or are there "company teams" on Kaggle ?

The article says people mention kaggle grandmaster in their CVs and H2o uses this to hire them as well. This is essentially lying on the resume then.

Re: A Kaggle Grandmaster cheated in $25k AI contest with hidden code

#20
post #14
post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s so fascinating to see how easily a human brain can be hijacked by status. I wonder if there’s a way to harness that power for improving individual performance...

Napoleon Bonaparte: “Give me enough medals and I'll win you any war”

Also true if you exclude the bit about medals.
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