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Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

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Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#51
post #23

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

Alright. 99.999% of us are replaceable.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#52

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

I believe you, but just for the sake of it: What AI research has had business value from Google in the last years that you could sell?

WaveNet is one example:

"Google Assistant adds 9 new AI-generated voices": https://venturebeat.com/2019/09/18/google-assistant-gains-9-...

Data center cooling is another one:

"How Google is Using AI for Data Center Cooling": https://www.bmc.com/blogs/data-center-cooling/

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#53
post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> All of us are replaceable That's a management illusion. Try to replace e.g. someone like Fabrice Bellard, Mike Pall or Claude Shannon. Of course such things happen in big companies, but mostly because management is too limited to properly assess the true value of certain individuals. But the article is actually about a different topic.

Alright. 99.999% of us are replaceable.

Also this is a management illusion. There is no evidence for this assumption. You don't even know the probability distribution. There is no reason to assume that the percentage is equally distributed across all firms or countries. And anyway, the article is about something else.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It says the high point is 2017, not the last good paper. There are of course other good papers coming out go Google. But the novelty is dropping and the angst is increasing.

Lots of people think protein folding is a bigger deal than beating the go champion.

Journalists were asking people from DeepMind why winning in Go is important. They said because it may lead to breakthrough in e.g. medicine. Well it didn't, at least not yet and not directly.

But we still got AlphaFold. And AlphaFold is the type of breakthroughs DeepMind is meant to make. Not playing games.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#55

> Is Google's AI research about to implode? No. (For reference see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge%27s_law_of_headline... ) Seriously though - even if the points in the article were true, none of them imply any kind of implosion or significant disruption in Google's research. > Maybe one day we will see the transition from Hinton (ways of representing complex data in a neural network) to Gebru (accountable r…

comparing Gebru to Hinton, wow... the woke crowd totally out of touch with reality

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#56

> I don’t want to downplay the deep instutionalised sexism and racism that is at play in Gebru’s firing — that is there for all to see. Really, where is that to see. You weaken your whole case with this kind of casual reference to "oh and she was also a black women" so racism and sexism apply. Its a type of crying wolf that loses you more people in what is the potentially important issue at hand, her work at google.…

In older honor-based cultures, this type of accusation would lead to a duel. We need a modern equivalent.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#58

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

I believe you, but just for the sake of it: What AI research has had business value from Google in the last years that you could sell?

[deleted]

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#59

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

I believe you, but just for the sake of it: What AI research has had business value from Google in the last years that you could sell?

AlphaFold may bring millions if not billions to DeepMind, Google and Alphabet. Figuring out structure of a single protein may cost up to 100 000 dollars.

Bert as applied to search from late 2019: https://www.google.com/amp/s/blog.google/products/search/sea...

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#60

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

To be fair, the article is not about the firing. In any case, the two researchers who got fired did more harm to Google than good. Internally no one cares they left. AI etichs is an esoteric academic research field.
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