Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
1–10 of 221 posts
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#2I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#3The context of Jeff Dean's response:
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#4The fact that the EDA companies are garbage in no way mitigates the fact that Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil.
This is easy to debunk from the Google side: release a tool. If you don't want to release a tool, then it's unsubstantiated and you don't get to publish. Simple.
That having been said:
1) None of these "AI" tools have yet demonstrated the ability to classify "This is datapath", "This is array logic", "This is random logic". This is the BIG win. And it won't just be a couple of percentage points in area or a couple of days saved when it works--it will be 25%+ in area and months in time.
2) Saving a couple of percentage points in random logic isn't impressive. If I have the compute power to run EDA tools with a couple of different random seeds, at least one run will likely be a couple percentage points better.
3) I really don't understand why they don't do stuff on analog/RF. The patterns are smaller and much better matches to the kind of reinforcement learning that current "AI" is suited for.
I put this snake oil in the same category as "financial advice"--if it worked, they wouldn't be sharing it and would simply be printing money by taking advantage of it.
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#5I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
> they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots
If they did not follow the steps to replicate (pre-training, using less compute, etc.) and then failed, so what's wrong with calling out the flaws in their attempted "replication"?
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#6I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
> But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying
That's not an argument made in the linked tweet. His claim is "they couldn't replicate it because they didn't follow the steps", which seems like a very reasonable claim, regardless of the motivation behind making it.
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#7The fact that the EDA companies are garbage in no way mitigates the fact that Google continues to peddle unsubstantiated snake oil. This is easy to debunk from the Google side: release a tool. If you don't want to release a tool, then it's unsubstantiated and you don't get to publish. Simple. That having been said: 1) None of these "AI" tools have yet demonstrated the ability to classify "This is datapath", "This is…
As someone who has no skin in the game and is only loosely following this, there is a tool: https://github.com/google-research/circuit_training, the detractors claim to not be able to reproduce Google's results (what Dean is commenting on) with it, Google and 1-2 other companies claim to be using it internally to success (e.g. see the end of this article: https://deepmind.google/discover/blog/how-alphachip-transfor...).
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#8I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
It's a good thing that he didn't say that, then.
The tweet just says that the reproduction attempt didn't didn't actually follow the original methodology. There is no claim that the authors of the replication attempt were "idiots" or anything similar, you just made that up. The obviously fallacious logic in "they couldn't replicate it ..., therefore it's replicable" is also a total fabrication on your part.
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#9I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
> they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots If they did not follow the steps to replicate (pre-training, using less compute, etc.) and then failed, so what's wrong with calling out the flaws in their attempted "replication"?
It's not a value judgement, just doesn't help his case at all. He'd need to counter the replication problem, but apparently that's not an option. Instead, he's making people who were unable to replicate it look bad, which actually strengthens their criticism.
Re: Jeff Dean responds to EDA industry about AlphaChip
#10I get why Jeff would be pressed to comment on this, given he's credited on basically all of "Google Brain" research output. But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying. Sounds like the critics struck a nerve and there's no good way for him to refute the replication problem his research apparently exhibits.
> But saying "they couldn't replicate it because they're idiots, therefore it's replicable" is not a rebuttal, just bullying That's not an argument made in the linked tweet. His claim is "they couldn't replicate it because they didn't follow the steps", which seems like a very reasonable claim, regardless of the motivation behind making it.
At the end of the day my question is simply why does anyone care about the drama over this one way or another?
Either the research is as much of a breakthrough as is claimed and Google is about to pull way ahead of all these other "idiots" who can't replicate their method even when it is described to them in detail, or the research is flawed and overblown and not as effective as claimed. This seems like exactly the sort of question the market will quickly decide over the next couple of years and not worth arguing over.
Why do a non-zero amount of people have seemingly religious beliefs about this topic on one side or the other?