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

theregister.co.uk

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

#121

Post by jeffshek »

shkkmo wrote: post #31

Am I missing something? It seems like "adoption speed" really isn't something you want to over optimize. The whole point is to match abandoned animals with suitable homes. Adoption speed seems secondary to post adoption measures of adopter satisfaction and adoptee welfare.

Adoption speed is probably the only proxy that could be used. Measuring quality of pet life in suitable homes is rarely collected.

I'm not even certain of how that could be objectively measured for children, let alone pets.

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

#122

Post by prodent »

tastyminerals wrote: post #115

Kaggle doesn't make a lot of sense to me. It's a good self education platform but that's it. It is kind of sad to see job interview candidates for ML positions whose only ML experience is Kaggle.

Where/how else would you get that experience if your current job does not involve ML?

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

#123

Post by Traster »

zkid18 wrote: post #86
rasz wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No doubt he is brilliant. Many investment banks will be happy to have him. He will fit right in something like Merrill Lynch or Goldman Sachs.

He made a good career in quant finance before diving into ML and Kaggle

I wouldn't necessarily describe him as having a 'good' career in quant finance. He spent 18 months as a quant and then left to go and cheat at ML competitions. It's not a traditional sign of a successful quant - giving up after 18 months.

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

#124

Post by archi42 »

mellosouls wrote: post #77

I'm surprised by some of the overly sympathetic comments here, the guy cheated , not "cheated" etc. Of course, we're all human, and he's come clean, but his actions potentially had a negative effect on the non-profit and the animals it places; and competing talents were denied their rightful places. This comment isn't about condemning him or anything, just let's be honest about what happened here; it wasn't ok, or ju…

> competing talents were denied their rightful places

Absolutely. What are the odds he (and/or others in his team?) did this just for this one competition? It's possible, but unlikely he/they invented this (or other) code hiding technique(s) just for this single occasion.

Also, the employer did the right thing and kick him out. Now they only have to scrutinize the last few months of his work instead of looking over his shoulders the next few years.

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

#126

Post by RomanBob »

nnq wrote: post #112
laydn wrote: post #109

Slightly off topic: The nature of the competition is a bit worrying to me. They're essentially letting an algorithm decide which dogs have the best chance of adoption and which to euthanize, aren't they?

THIS! Drop the "slightly"... I can't understand how people focus so much on the competition cheating, and so less on "wait, wtf are they doing here"... I mean, even if they are not deciding whether to euthanize or not based on this, you're still building a system that introduces "good looks" as a factor in a life-and-death decision regarding a living being. It's not hard to jump from this a system that would use your…

If some animals are going to be euthanised, would you rather you euthanise at random, or euthanise those who are likely not going to be adopted anyway.

The problem here isn't AI, it's the problem of pet ownership. This problem has existed. And you are criticising an imperfect attempt at solving a part of this problem, because the solution isn't perfect.

shake my head

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

#127

Post by archi42 »

75dvtwin wrote: post #118

It was briefly discussed about 7 days ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22045696 I posted there, same self-addressed question, that I cannot figure out the answer to... It seems that intensives to cheat, and environment where 'means justify the ways' -- are overpowering. For people who are naturally gifted, successful at young age -- why cheat? Was this historically, always like this? These insensitive to che…

Hello fellow non native speaker. You don't mean "insensitive[s]", but " incentive[s]".

On topic: My university offers "Ethics for Nerds [=CompSci]" lecture. The lecturers have degrees in both CS and Philosophy, and the stated goal is to make compsci students more aware of ethical implications - plus giving them some tools/thinking to assess these implications.

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

#128

Post by Hercuros »

harry8 wrote: post #107
iudqnolq wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your parent is saying kaggle takes the training code and runs it themselves. This makss secretly training on the known right answers impossible.

There is no such thing as "training code". You have a model that you have trained on some provided data - the training set. You give kaggle this model. Kaggle grades your model on some different data your model has never seen. The better your model classifies this data it hasn't seen the higher it scores and the more money you win. So again if you trained your model (code) on a training set that you have illegally ob…

People are saying that you do not just submit your trained model to Kaggle. You also submit the code that was used to train the model from the training set, which is used in the winning models to train them from scratch on the training set. Of course, that wouldn't have prevented this type of cheating of course, but it does mean that you can't submit a model that was trained on your own private data set.

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

#129

Post by lultimouomo »

ribs wrote: post #87

It really worries me how many people are so quick to forgive him and tell him so. In my family if someone cheated they got called a cheater and suffered consequences. At least, they would have, if someone did something like that. But my parents didn’t raise mendacious villains. Look at this crap on Twitter: “Everyone makes mistakes. Thank you for the apology”. “Kagglers will still love to have you back” “It's great t…

> In my family if someone cheated they got called a cheater and suffered consequences.

He was publicly shamed, banned from Kaggle and he lost his job (and I guess he's basically unhireable right now).

I wonder what would be your family reaction, if these things don't sound like consequences to you.

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

#130

Post by honestoHeminway »

mellosouls wrote: post #77

I'm surprised by some of the overly sympathetic comments here, the guy cheated , not "cheated" etc. Of course, we're all human, and he's come clean, but his actions potentially had a negative effect on the non-profit and the animals it places; and competing talents were denied their rightful places. This comment isn't about condemning him or anything, just let's be honest about what happened here; it wasn't ok, or ju…

Which is why he is now in the blackbook.db. Professional social death. And silence. All is forgiven.
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