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Facebook's AI lab

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Re: Facebook's AI lab

#51

Post by DanBC »

nacs wrote: post #49
DanBC wrote: post #31

When Google announces AI research it makes sense because self driving cars and trying to understand what a user means by typing stuff in a search box. But Facebook? They could create a million virtual DanBCs and then A/B test something against them, and then present me with the irresistible ad, perfectly pitched to draw me in?

And what makes you think Google can't or won't do the same? Their latest aggressive push of Google+ everywhere including the forced Youtube integration indicates that they have the capability or have been doing exactly what you suggest. Not to mention the huge amounts of data they collect through searches and Gmail that they already have been using to tailor ads to each visitor.

Oh, I totally agree.

I see Google announcing AI research, and I think "self driving car" or "understanding search terms", but I have no doubt that it's also "serve better ads" or "slurp more data".

You're right, I should have put that in.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#52

Post by ars_technician »

res0nat0r wrote: post #44
lucb1e wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Define: freely I think Moxie Marlinespike's talk at Defcon 18 (2010) was a really good one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eG0KrT6pBPk He talks about how we do not really have a free choice when it comes to things like having a Facebook account or having a mobile phone. Namely due to the network effect, you don't really have a choice if you want to be a normal member of society.

How is any of that Facebooks fault?

That's exactly their goal. Get as many people to use it as possible so it will be painful to not use. Then exploit the information they gain as much as possible because the users have no alternative.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#53

Post by utunga »

bch wrote: post #50
zerooneinfinity wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really changes the phrase 'those who can't do teach'.

That sassy phrase (Those who can, do; those who can't, teach.) is irritating to me. Now I'm not casting judgement on anybody who _does_ find it entertaining, or useful, but for what it's worth, the _original_ phrase is: Those who know, do; those who understand, teach. -Aristotle.

"Those who can't do, teach. And those who can't teach, teach gym.” - Woody Allen

Obviously it's an iterating/evolving meme.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#54

Post by Schwolop »

Irishsteve wrote: post #29
swalsh wrote: post #10

The AI facebook has today is already freaky to me at times... while I love any new advancement in AI, these advancements will probably not be used in my interests.

It looks like they don't have anything particularly taxing compared to the likes of Google. There is only so much they can apply to the FB feed. Graph search while cool still isn't that advanced.

There's plenty of data on the world wide web that pertains to you but isn't linked to Facebook - yet. AI that can do context aware authorship analysis could have huge returns for Facebook.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#55

Post by res0nat0r »

ars_technician wrote: post #52
res0nat0r wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How is any of that Facebooks fault?

That's exactly their goal. Get as many people to use it as possible so it will be painful to not use. Then exploit the information they gain as much as possible because the users have no alternative.

No alternative? No one is being forced to use Facebook.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#56

Post by fat0wl »

jibberia wrote: post #35
fat0wl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man that guy was my machine learning professor at NYU :) Sparked my interested in Lisp, but now I seem to recall that he wrote all the problem examples in his own language.... Lush. Even so, all my knowledge of Lisp syntax and neural nets stems from his bad-ass lectures

I started taking that class but had to drop it -- tried it way too early in my CS career. Having to use his language definitely didn't help! But you're right, I absolutely loved the lectures, even if a bunch of it went over my head.

i had the good fortune of just auditing ;) i was there for music DSP, not CS

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#57

Post by mathattack »

fat0wl wrote: post #16
yeukhon wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I beg to differ. They still publish papers and big names in academia are often consultants or receiving grants from private industry. And according to LeCun he will remain as professor at NYU and run his research lab from NYU. He will serve as director and lead researcher.

Oh man that guy was my machine learning professor at NYU :) Sparked my interested in Lisp, but now I seem to recall that he wrote all the problem examples in his own language.... Lush. Even so, all my knowledge of Lisp syntax and neural nets stems from his bad-ass lectures

Forcing folks to learn his own language is a pretty big conceit. You think he'll be able to get away with that at Fbook?

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#58

Post by jfoster »

yangtheman wrote: post #21

Am I the only one who is skeptical about this announcement? I am sure the amount of data Facebook has will be huge asset to any sort of AI development, but precisely because of the amount of data and the kinds of data they have, it's just scary what this could be used for... AI that has personal information of 500M+ people, using it to manipulate people...(first to click on advertisements, and then much more). In the…

Would facebook's data actually be useful to the NSA? I think they would get a lot more actionable data out of emails, SMSes, phone transcripts, accounting software, project management software, etc. The only thing I can imagine facebook being good for is perhaps knowing who they want to start looking at in the future. Search engine history might be more effective for that, though.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#59

Post by robrenaud »

mathattack wrote: post #57
fat0wl wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh man that guy was my machine learning professor at NYU :) Sparked my interested in Lisp, but now I seem to recall that he wrote all the problem examples in his own language.... Lush. Even so, all my knowledge of Lisp syntax and neural nets stems from his bad-ass lectures

Forcing folks to learn his own language is a pretty big conceit. You think he'll be able to get away with that at Fbook?

It's just a lisp variant with a procedural/matrix mathy bend. It's super easy to pick up if you've written any lisp.

Re: Facebook's AI lab

#60

Post by sushirain »

res0nat0r wrote: post #55
ars_technician wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's exactly their goal. Get as many people to use it as possible so it will be painful to not use. Then exploit the information they gain as much as possible because the users have no alternative.

No alternative? No one is being forced to use Facebook.

There is an increasing amount of peer pressure though.
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