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Visual Information Theory (2015)

colah.github.io

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Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#11

Post by kgraves »

typo_hunter wrote: post #10
tw1010 wrote: post #2

This guy seems to have peaked in terms of creative output while he was on the thiel fellowship, and then abruptly stop once he was sucked up by google.

What a toxic comment. Many people would consider DeepDream and Inceptionism to be the spark that ignited a lot of creative work in deep learning, which Christopher Olah wrote on while at Google AI.

Disagree, I don't find this a "toxic" comment. The parent makes a point. Such potential in my opinion from these researchers/engineers and instead gets scooped up by the big tech companies, hoarding the talent such that nobody can compete with them.

Happy for Chris's decision to be at the big G doing his research, but it seems every researcher/engineer is obsessed with being at the big tech companies being on their resume, which is such a shame.

Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#12

Post by b3kart »

tw1010 wrote: post #2

This guy seems to have peaked in terms of creative output while he was on the thiel fellowship, and then abruptly stop once he was sucked up by google.

It’s sad that people have less time to contribute to public knowledge when hired by big companies, but saying that someone “has peaked” is just mean. I am sure you’d find it easy to say no to Google money.

Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#15

Post by rrherr »

tw1010 wrote: post #2

This guy seems to have peaked in terms of creative output while he was on the thiel fellowship, and then abruptly stop once he was sucked up by google.

Chris Olah is first author on these papers in distill.pub:

- https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ - https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/ - https://distill.pub/2016/augmented-rnns/

He explains his personal mission, doing research distillation to reduce research debt, in this essay: https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/

Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#16

Post by sailingparrot »

tw1010 wrote: post #9
sailingparrot wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you weren't aware he moved to https://distill.pub/ ?

Not trying to make a judgement about the lack of output or anything. I appreciate the work he did and the ideas he published. Mostly making a comment on the observation that outsider researchers being bought by google doesn't seem to produce the greatest effect on the open source idea-sphere. But he's free to do whatever he wants of course.

Didn't think you were making a judgement, but I don't understand your comment about him abrubptly stopping, since he never stopped.

Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#18

Post by behnamoh »

rrherr wrote: post #15
tw1010 wrote: post #2

This guy seems to have peaked in terms of creative output while he was on the thiel fellowship, and then abruptly stop once he was sucked up by google.

Chris Olah is first author on these papers in distill.pub: - https://distill.pub/2018/building-blocks/ - https://distill.pub/2017/feature-visualization/ - https://distill.pub/2016/augmented-rnns/ He explains his personal mission, doing research distillation to reduce research debt, in this essay: https://distill.pub/2017/research-debt/

I wish more people were interested in research distillation. Recently I've been searching for intuitive explanations of different areas of math, and while there are some great blogs that do so, the lack of such materials is indeed obvious.

I don't think academia is going to contribute to this mission as it's mostly governed by a make-it-look-ridiculously-difficult-so-people-won't-find-it-approachable-and-thus-give-you-much-credit-for-doing-impressive-work culture.

Re: Visual Information Theory (2015)

#20

Post by seanmcdirmid »

kgraves wrote: post #11
typo_hunter wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a toxic comment. Many people would consider DeepDream and Inceptionism to be the spark that ignited a lot of creative work in deep learning, which Christopher Olah wrote on while at Google AI.

Disagree, I don't find this a "toxic" comment. The parent makes a point. Such potential in my opinion from these researchers/engineers and instead gets scooped up by the big tech companies, hoarding the talent such that nobody can compete with them. Happy for Chris's decision to be at the big G doing his research, but it seems every researcher/engineer is obsessed with being at the big tech companies being on their r…

Working research for a big tech means you are much less subject to the “publish or perish” req of a university. It often isn’t a must have resume point, but it actually gives you a different kind of freedom.
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