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Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

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Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#11

Post by minwcnt5 »

balakk wrote: post #6
kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

I would argue that Google has had the largest impact on information dissemination , since the invention of pen and paper. Advertising is just a means for providing comfortable livelihoods to these excellent people. There's no better place for these people to be working. We got some spectacular output when some bright folks ended up working together in a phone company, better than any university. Why not Google?

> Advertising is just a means for providing comfortable livelihoods to these excellent people.

I'd say it's a bit more than that; what Google has done in advertising has benefitted millions of consumers and businesses. I'm not sure why people tend to look down on some of the work they do in advertising as somehow being less worthy than working on GMail or Search!

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#12

Post by [deleted] »

moultano wrote: post #5
kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

I don't think you can accuse Google of short sighted commercial ends here. The team he is working with has already done really groundbreaking stuff that falls right in line with his work. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ResearchatGoogle/posts/EMyhnBet...

[deleted]

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#13

Post by jarek »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #8
kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

To be fair , google are doing a lot more than "making people click on ads". There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there. Google also serves the purpose of amplifying the power of great (and not so great) minds by putting so much information at their fingertips. The ads part is just what writes the cheques.

> There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there.

Does the research get published or otherwise make it outside of the Googleplex? Serious question.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#14

Post by moultano »

jarek wrote: post #13
jiggy2011 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair , google are doing a lot more than "making people click on ads". There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there. Google also serves the purpose of amplifying the power of great (and not so great) minds by putting so much information at their fingertips. The ads part is just what writes the cheques.

> There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there. Does the research get published or otherwise make it outside of the Googleplex? Serious question.

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ResearchatGoogle/posts/EMyhnBet...

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#15

Post by waterlesscloud »

klipt wrote: post #10
jahewson wrote: post #2

So is Google now more appealing to academics than academia?

For research requiring ridiculous amounts of processing power, large corporations have the advantage over most universities.

Indeed.

It's not hard to see why a neural network researcher in particular would get excited about having access to tremendous amounts of data and computer clusters.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#16

Post by zxtang »

jarek wrote: post #13
jiggy2011 wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair , google are doing a lot more than "making people click on ads". There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there. Google also serves the purpose of amplifying the power of great (and not so great) minds by putting so much information at their fingertips. The ads part is just what writes the cheques.

> There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there. Does the research get published or otherwise make it outside of the Googleplex? Serious question.

http://research.google.com

For reference, I googled "research at google".

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#17

Post by [deleted] »

kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

[deleted]

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#18

Post by OGinparadise »

balakk wrote: post #6
kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

I would argue that Google has had the largest impact on information dissemination , since the invention of pen and paper. Advertising is just a means for providing comfortable livelihoods to these excellent people. There's no better place for these people to be working. We got some spectacular output when some bright folks ended up working together in a phone company, better than any university. Why not Google?

Not the means, it's the end, and everything feeds to that. Especially search with their "updates," Chrome, Android, UI etc. Hinton has his work cut out, make users click on ads! Looks like playing with colors has been milked already.

"I would argue that Google has had the largest impact on information dissemination , since the invention of pen and paper."

Because they are a search engine and is used by most people. Now, however, Google is replacing information with ads and with sub-par information that is beneficial to their bottom line. That hurts creators, readers and society in general.

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#19

Post by DannyBee »

kolektiv wrote: post #3

Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…

You have this impression of universities that i don't believe has been true for at least 100 years, if not more.

Research professors at schools have been mostly funded by either commercial or military interests for a very long time now. Even in non-direct cases, universities have "tech transfer" offices that are commercializing stuff, and continued funding often depends on that.

If you are going to claim this model is bad and that it produces bad results, you are going to have to offer at least a little evidence that the models that existed before this, worked, and were better for humanity.

I might agree with the second part in some ways, but I dont' think they supported anywhere near the amount or level of research that occurs now.

Research is definitely more goal directed than it used to be, but this is not totally good or totally bad, it's just "different".

Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google

#20

Post by rednukleus »

[deleted] wrote: post #12
moultano wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you can accuse Google of short sighted commercial ends here. The team he is working with has already done really groundbreaking stuff that falls right in line with his work. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ResearchatGoogle/posts/EMyhnBet...

[deleted]

1. They don't sell info, they just target ads

2. Google are an AI company, who currently make most of their profit from ads. They are well aware that there are big opportunities for them to make profits outside targeted ads.

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