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A Year at Google Brain (2020)

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Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#81

> For example, my coworkers let me take the lead in writing an academic paper about TensorFlow 2, even though my contributions to the technology were smaller than theirs. Sounds like some folks didn't like writing! :)

The relevant question isn't who wrote the bulk of a paper - it's whose name appears first on the list of authors :).

This guy is [1], if I found the right paper. Though the order appears to be alphabetical.

[1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01855

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#82
post #31
post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! While Google Brain is focused specifically on AI, Stanford as a whole conducts research across a very wide range of disciplines. As a result, my network at Stanford has a more diverse collection of interests. As a PhD candidate I have worked with or am connected to people interested in neuroscience, radiation treatment planning, finance, control, economics, computer systems, and (yes) machine learning, among ot…

how much real-world collaboration do you get to do with students, postdocs and faculty in those other disciplines? (ie; what is the experience like when one does a phd in computational tools as opposed to a specific stem domain?)

I think it depends on many things, such as whether people at your university are generally collaborative, and whether your advisor or you are well connected. Most of my time is spent on tools or fundamental research, since that's my primary interest; but sometimes people will reach out to me (or vice versa) about starting a collaboration. But even just exchanging notes and chatting with researchers in other disciplines has been fun.

But that is just my experience. Some of my labmates had PhD's in which the majority of their work was collaborative, across disciplines.

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#83
post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern ML certainly has some cool applications, but none seem revolutionary. Can you list any that are?

When you demo some tech to 5 year old and he mistakens it for magic, I think it’s revolutionary enough. In current state of art, Atari RL, AlphaGo, AlphaFold, GPT3, GANs, Pix2pix, CLIP, DeepFakes etc are very very revolutionary. You can take any of these and go back in time even just 15 years ago, people won’t believe what was accomplished. However, I do believe we are far and away from generalized intelligence.

Yes, those applications are awesome. I just think they don't hold a candle to (sorry for the pun) fire, or electricity. But maybe that's not a useful comparison, since very few people likely think (today's) AI to be _that_ revolutionary.

The comparison to fire and electricity aside --- you're absolutely right, we can do very interesting things with machine learning & automatic differentiation these days!

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern ML certainly has some cool applications, but none seem revolutionary. Can you list any that are?

Off the top of my head: When paired with a robotic medium, we'll be able to automate most pattern driven jobs like construction, welding, surgery, anything really that doesn't require human element to it and is more of a pattern matching behavior. This is extremely revolutionary and will put a ton of people out of work. Any pattern-dependent job that does not require human interaction will be at risk, even coding (as…

That would be revolutionary! Like others in the comments, I haven't seen evidence that this can be done with today's technology. But I would be happily be proved wrong, and would love to learn more.

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The relevant question isn't who wrote the bulk of a paper - it's whose name appears first on the list of authors :).

This guy is [1], if I found the right paper. Though the order appears to be alphabetical. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01855

It's not alphabetical.

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is [1], if I found the right paper. Though the order appears to be alphabetical. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01855

It's not alphabetical.

Akshay A..., Akshay N..., Ale..., All..., Ash..., Asi..., I..., J..., M..., R..., S...

Looks alphabetical for me

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I find this "AI-first" branding to be really off-putting Honestly my first reaction was a snarky "Well, your moderation and support channels certainly are" given all the horror stories we hear about people getting locked out of their entire google accounts with no recourse or access to humans to appeal / investigate.

I kind of love how google has destroyed their reputation on the customer support side and doesn't seem to care. I believe at a certain point it will affect their bottom line. They must be betting that they develop passable AI support before that happens.

Did Google ever have a good reputation for customer support?

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yikes, jesus christ. I wonder what they think of people at "regular companies" like mine or people that graduated from "regular schools".

I myself graduated as one such commodity PhD student, and I don’t consider it as a derogatory term, mere reality. Contrast to regular jobs, the PhD nowadays is more like the arts where the top candidates disproportionately reap the benefits. If you’re not at a top tier university or a star advisor your academic prospects are middling from the beginning. Not saying you can’t make it happen, a lot of my friends do, but…

The farther you are away from the top schools, the less the faculty are likely to see you as a potential peer or someone who might inherit or carry on their legacy. Combined with control over funding this produces a dangerous power dynamic.

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#89
post #53
post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In 1850, few people felt that electricity was particularly profound either. That year, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Michael Faraday why electricity was valuable. Faraday replied, "One day sir, you may tax it." [1]. The electric motor had been invented (by Faraday), but it couldn't do any useful work and had to sit in a pool of mercury to function. Electric lighting had been invented, but the…

So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. You can make a claim that "This might be revolutionary! It's just too early to tell." about literally anything .

Yeah, but if we're looking for potential revolutions, we already have a bunch of data that points towards AI in the possibility space.

Re: A Year at Google Brain (2020)

#90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This guy is [1], if I found the right paper. Though the order appears to be alphabetical. [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/1903.01855

It's not alphabetical.

It literally says "Authors listed in alphabetical order." right in the paper.

I just don't get some HN assertions...

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