What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
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Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#2A simple solution would be for the government to fund more fundamental research.
Research results should be public goods.
It seems hard to encourage companies to do public research, as they have no short / middle term interest to do so
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#3A simple solution would be for the government to fund more fundamental research. Research results should be public goods. It seems hard to encourage companies to do public research, as they have no short / middle term interest to do so
Companies have at least as much interest to do research as they have to do any other charitable activity. The private sector does plenty of charity.
Not sure the government should be involved. Not because basic research ain't great---in an ideal world we'd all get ponies from the government---but because budgets are finite and there are other opportunities some of them with more definite benefits.
(Like eg funding education, especially early education. Or perhaps just taxing less, etc.)
One interesting thing to note is that in our world the American and British military funded some of the first computers. A clear example of government funded research. But---if the government wouldn't have paid for inventing computers for the militaries, IBM came up with computers only a few years later. (And in the counterfactual with less government expenditures, the private sector might have had more funds left over to build computers earlier?)
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#4Currently giving 'Error establishing a database connection'
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#5Mmmh, I am not a specialist and I don't know the numbers, but it seems to me that fundamental research is not less active than it used to be.
Physics made a lot of progress in materials (nano tech, weird polymers, and so on), in building batteries, in finding the higgs boson and gravitational waves, and I'm sure plenty of other fields.
Medical research has advanced a lot with the invention of CRISPR.
CS has grown a lot in AI and quantum computing...
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#6A simple solution would be for the government to fund more fundamental research. Research results should be public goods. It seems hard to encourage companies to do public research, as they have no short / middle term interest to do so
Companies have at least as much interest to do research as they have to do any other charitable activity. The private sector does plenty of charity. Not sure the government should be involved. Not because basic research ain't great---in an ideal world we'd all get ponies from the government---but because budgets are finite and there are other opportunities some of them with more definite benefits. (Like eg funding ed…
I think charity improves their public image more than fundamental research, that will be known only by specialists. Moreover, they have large tax incentives for charitable activities (not sure if they have for research too)
For the military computers, they had a clear interest in doing so, and the military keeps most of their research hidden, so I think it's not really comparable to public research
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#7Currently giving 'Error establishing a database connection'
I can see the webpage
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#8This article implies a positive corelation between technology, research and employment, which is unsubstantiated. Employment rate is a function of politics.
Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#9Re: What AlphaGo Zero teaches us about what’s going wrong with innovation
#10Earlier quoted context omitted.
Companies have at least as much interest to do research as they have to do any other charitable activity. The private sector does plenty of charity. Not sure the government should be involved. Not because basic research ain't great---in an ideal world we'd all get ponies from the government---but because budgets are finite and there are other opportunities some of them with more definite benefits. (Like eg funding ed…
I think charity improves their public image more than fundamental research, that will be known only by specialists. Moreover, they have large tax incentives for charitable activities (not sure if they have for research too) For the military computers, they had a clear interest in doing so, and the military keeps most of their research hidden, so I think it's not really comparable to public research
I think it's relatively easy to set up a charity to do your basic research for you, and reap the tax benefits? (I'm not an American, and I assume you are talking about American tax system? Other countries are different.)
Universities are notorious for spinning their basic research into good PR (and often overblown press releases), even if it would only be interesting to specialists normally.
I think companies like Google (and earlier IBM) reap a lot of more specialised PR from their basic research: it helps with hiring to be seen as a cool company at the forefront of technology.