Why does Google X exist?
Why did Google Brain exist?
171–180 of 328 posts
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
How do you know he was paid to keep all internal details private after he leaves? Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us? All he says is his concern about "optics", which has nothing to do with contract. If Google has a problem with his post, they can go after him, but that's an issue between Google and him, not with you or me or the rest of the internet. I'm def…
> Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us? I actually could dig up my own contract from years ago (ugh, the effort though) but Confidentiality clause is in there, and it was made clear during on-boarding what is expected from employees: don't share any internal info unless you're an authorized company representative.
So only people who never worked at Google are allowed to criticse Google?
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
Automatic subtitles and translation is actually a huge feature which is very useful to the many people that don't speak English. It definitely did provide Google with a lot of value.
> Automatic subtitles and translation is actually a huge feature which is very useful to the many people that don't speak English. It definitely did provide Google with a lot of value. It lost Google immense value. Before Google Brain the only speech recognizers that halfway worked were at Google, IBM and Amazon. And Amazon had to buy a company to get access. After Google Brain, anyone can run a speech recognizer. On…
It's too late now. YouTube penetrated every single market outside of China and is now unshakeable from network effect
It completely paid off already, and Google is going to be reaping the dividends of the advantage they had in emerging markets for the next 15 years.
The real advantage has always been network effect. Purely technological moats don't work in the long term. People catching up was inevitable, but Google was able to cash it into a untouchable worldwide lead, and on top of that they made their researchers happy and recruited others by allowing them to publish, and they don't need to maintain an expensive purely technical lead.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well I think the issue is more of if you’re Genentech and you need ML people and can’t afford to pay them you’re probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs.
I think you missed my point. Genentech, AFAIK, was not doing research on machine learning as in the principles of how machine learning works and how to make it better. They do biotech research which uses applied machine learning. You don't need a PhD in ML to apply things that are already known
You can get an ML PhD doing applied ML.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#175I work for Google Brain. I remember meeting Brian at a conference and I have nothing but good things to say about him. That said, I think Brian is underestimating the extent to which the Brain/DeepMind merger is happening because it's what researchers want. Many of us have a strong sense that the future of ML involves models built by large teams in industry environments. My impression is that the goal of the merger i…
The goal of the merger is for execs to look like they are doing something to drive progress. Actual progress comes from the researchers and developers.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#176Lots of great insight. Here’s one: “Given the long timelines of a PhD program, the vast majority of early ML researchers were self-taught crossovers from other fields. This created the conditions for excellent interdisciplinary work to happen. This transitional anomaly is unfortunately mistaken by most people to be an inherent property of machine learning to upturn existing fields. It is not. Today, the vast majority…
> "[...] I’ve seen repeatedly that it’s much harder for a ML PhD to learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML.” That's good ol' academic gatekeeping for ya, available wherever PhD's are found.
There’s more to it than that.
CS is unusually easy to learn on your own. You can mess around, build intuition, and check your progress—-all on your own and in your pyjamas. It’s easy to roll things back if you make a mistake, and hard to do lasting damage. There are tons of useful resources, often freely available. Thus, you can get to an intermediate level quickly and cheaply.
Wet-lab fields have none of that. Hands-on experience and mentorship is hard for beginners to get outside of school. There are a few introductory things online, but what’s the Andrew Ng MOOC for pchem?
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#177> I sat on it because I wasn’t sure of the optics of posting such an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check cleared... I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public accounts of their previous ( and sometime current! ) employers' inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work and to keep all intern…
I've been quite careful not to divulge anything confidential, and anything that is remotely close to sensitive has publicly accessible citations. My opinions about Google are tantamount to discussions about workplace conditions, and it would be very bad for society if ex-employees were not allowed to discuss those.
It’s obvious you care about the people you worked with, and the potential for what you were building. From my perspective you wrote this for the people who couldn’t.
Ignore this person.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I’ve seen repeatedly that it’s much harder for a ML PhD to learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML I can confirm. We regularly look for people to write some computational physics code, and recently for people using ML to solve solid state physics problems. It’s way easier to bring a good physicist or chemist to a decent CS level (either ML or HPC) than the other way around.
This is because software developers are too good at automation themselves out of a job.
It's also because nobody goes to get a phd in solid state physics for the money or career prospects, at least not in the last decade. So it's a small and self selected group.
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#179Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you share the relevant language with us? I actually could dig up my own contract from years ago (ugh, the effort though) but Confidentiality clause is in there, and it was made clear during on-boarding what is expected from employees: don't share any internal info unless you're an authorized company representative.
General working conditions are not "internal info"; it is beneficial to society to discuss working conditions (which can be pretty detailed), and is thus a protected activity under various laws. Nothing in any contract can obviate this lawful right (and, to some, a basic duty of citizenship, since the country is more important than any single company within the country). At best contracts can highlight what is privil…
Now you have me curious. Which laws, specifically?
Re: Why did Google Brain exist?
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you expand why being part of Google X hinders a team? I believe Waymo "graduated" from Google X to its own entity.
X exists as a press-release generation system, not as a real technology creation system. They onboard many impractical projects that are either copies of something being done already in industry ("but with more Google and ML!") or doesn't have a market (space elevators).
Waymo has developed the modern autonomous vehicle from the ground up. It's basically a matter of scale now. It's a mindblowing tech stack. The first time riding in one is much more otherwordly than using GPT for the first time. The value of the technology is far greater whatever PR they have generated (not many people know about it)