101–110 of 170 posts
> 1%... you're pretty much finished... try that with product submission schedules [1]
...so now we know who to blame for future Google product delays.
[1]: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zihTWh5i2C4
EDIT: added the source link
Earlier quoted context omitted.
He did a lot of work in text to speech, speech recognition, OCR, etc. back in the day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_Kurzweil#Mid-life
Of course, fluffster was directed at you and I know what Kurzweil did.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why would you ever think that he is being blindly allocated to the position of Director of Engineering? In that position, he'll pretty much be in control of his own destiny at Google.
When I was there, Directors were still above the Real Googler Line, but it may have moved up in the time since then. Also, he lives in Massachusetts, which means he'll only get the work that MTV doesn't want (unless he moves). Finally, with his visibility, he's going to get a lot of prank Perf and his manager is going to have a hard time promoting him because of that.
Thanks in part to the popularity of his books, movie, and speeches, Kurzweil now knows pretty much every AI researcher in the planet, and we can safely assume he's aware of even very obscure research projects in the field, both inside and outside academia. Joining Google gives him ready access to data sets of almost unimaginable size, as well as unparalleled infrastructure and skills for handling such large data sets…
I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.
The problem with Peter Norvig is that he comes from a mathematical background and is a strong defender the use of statistical models that have no biological basis.[1] While they have their use in specific areas, they will never lead us to a general purpose strong AI.
Lately Kurzweil has come around to see that symbolic and bayesian networks have been holding AI back for the past 50 years. He is now a proponent of using biologically inspired methods similar to Jeff Hawkins' approach of Hierarchical Temporal Memory.
Hopefully, he'll bring some fresh ideas to Google. This will be especially useful in areas like voice recognition and translation. For example, just last week, I needed to translate. "I need to meet up" to Chinese. Google translates it to 我需要满足, meaning "I need to satisfy". This is where statistical translations fail, because statistics and probabilities will never teach machines to "understand" language.
[1] http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/06/norvig-vs-chomsky-and-the-f...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reposting this comment I made a couple of months ago. He's no John McCarthy, but he was a true pioneer in the commercial applications of AI: ================================== I don't think that's a very fair assessment of Kurzweil's role in technology. He was on the ground, getting his hands dirty with the first commercial applications of AI. He made quite a bit of money selling his various companies and technol…
Not to be a downer, but text-to-speech, speech recognition, music synthesis, and so forth are all fairly obvious applications of computer science that anyone could have pioneered without being a genius. Likewise, predicting self-driving cars is nothing science fiction has not already done. I'm sure he is a smart guy, but I think we have put him on a pedestal when he probably is not as remarkable as we want him to be.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not to be a downer, but text-to-speech, speech recognition, music synthesis, and so forth are all fairly obvious applications of computer science that anyone could have pioneered without being a genius. Likewise, predicting self-driving cars is nothing science fiction has not already done. I'm sure he is a smart guy, but I think we have put him on a pedestal when he probably is not as remarkable as we want him to be.
I don't mean to pick on you (and I certainly didn't downvote you), but you seem like a posterboy for just how easy it is to take inventions and innovation for granted after the fact. I find it instructive to occassionally go to Youtube and load up commericals for Windows 95, 3.1, the first Mac, etc., or even to dust off and boot up an old computer I haven't touched for decades. Not to get too pretentious, but it's a…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.
> I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. The problem with Peter Norvig is that he comes from a mathematical background and is a strong defender the use of statistical models that have no biological basis.[1] While they have their use in specific areas, they will never lead us to a general purpose strong AI. Lately Kurzweil has come around to see that symbolic and bayesian networks have be…
this is irrelevant
This is like saying a computer using an x86 processor is different, from the point of view of the user than an ARM computer, beyond differences in software
Or like saying DNA is needed for "data storage" in biological systems and not another technology
Sure, you can get inspiration from biology, but doesn't necessarily mean you have to copy it.
""I need to meet up" to Chinese. Google translates it to 我需要满足, meaning "I need to satisfy". This is where statistical translations fail, "
It's not really a fault of statistical translations (more likely quality of data issue), even though it has its limitations. Besides, google translation has been successful exactly because it's better than other existing methods (and Google has the resources, both in people and data to make it better)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.
> I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. The problem with Peter Norvig is that he comes from a mathematical background and is a strong defender the use of statistical models that have no biological basis.[1] While they have their use in specific areas, they will never lead us to a general purpose strong AI. Lately Kurzweil has come around to see that symbolic and bayesian networks have be…
It's still flight, even if it's not done like a bird. Just because nature does it one way doesn't mean it's the only way.
(On a side note, multilayer perceptrons aren't all that different from how neurons work - hence the term "artificial neural network". But they also bridge to a pure mathematical/statistical background. The divide between them is not clear-cut; the whole point of mathematics is to model the world.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm reposting this comment I made a couple of months ago. He's no John McCarthy, but he was a true pioneer in the commercial applications of AI: ================================== I don't think that's a very fair assessment of Kurzweil's role in technology. He was on the ground, getting his hands dirty with the first commercial applications of AI. He made quite a bit of money selling his various companies and technol…
Not to be a downer, but text-to-speech, speech recognition, music synthesis, and so forth are all fairly obvious applications of computer science that anyone could have pioneered without being a genius. Likewise, predicting self-driving cars is nothing science fiction has not already done. I'm sure he is a smart guy, but I think we have put him on a pedestal when he probably is not as remarkable as we want him to be.
This does not mean he was not smart, I am simply making a general truth: there are few "original" inventions, and many "obvious" inventions. If you do not think these things were obvious, how long do you think it would take for the next implementation to appear? I would bet 1-3 years at most. No single human is that extraordinary -- some just work harder than others at becoming visible.
Thanks in part to the popularity of his books, movie, and speeches, Kurzweil now knows pretty much every AI researcher in the planet, and we can safely assume he's aware of even very obscure research projects in the field, both inside and outside academia. Joining Google gives him ready access to data sets of almost unimaginable size, as well as unparalleled infrastructure and skills for handling such large data sets…
I just can't see Kurzweil being in the same league as Peter Norvig. Sure, he did some interesting work a long time ago, before he got weird. I can't see this working out well for Google, unless they just want a famous figurehead.