Is Google’s AI research about to implode? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#101

Post by sp332 » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:31 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #94

paulsutter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of general interest, Jeff Dean’s comment on why the Gebru paper didn’t meet Google’s publication guidelines: “Highlighting risks without pointing out methods for researchers and developers to understand and mitigate those risks misses the mark on helping with these problems” from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...

Isn't that asking too much. How would a researcher also know how mitigate the problems they identified.

Of course. Especially to expect all that to be in each individual published paper.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#102

Post by MontyCarloHall » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:34 PM UTC

Bakary wrote: post #97

ramblerman wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's certainly true for most of us but not the names the op mentioned. I would argue the real ego resistance is in not accepting such people exist.

Both are true: there are supernaturally talented people and also an incredibly wide world. If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. We are also reasoning from the POV of our own reality. We see the people we did get, but it could be the case that we missed some brilliant minds that do exist in some alternative un…

> If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world.

Intellects aren’t fungible. Even if there are 800 Fabrice Ballard-level minds out there, I doubt most of them have honed their brain on the exact problems he’s worked on. You can’t just find another one-in-ten-million mind and put them to work on the problems of another 1/1e7 mind and expect comparable results.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#103

Post by qwerty456127 » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:35 PM UTC

I would say the QAnon example demonstrates how useful the model actually is. It has been fed some [false] knowledge and answered in perfect accordance with what it has been taught. Doesn't this mean it is can give useful answers to real questions if taught real (scientifically proven) facts?

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#104

Post by haakonhr » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:36 PM UTC

Rochus wrote: post #90

Applejinx wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's an axiom. It defines a way to make collective/collaborative entities hopefully bigger than the sum of their parts. I think of these things (corporations, groups, movements) as aggregate people, and that's very much what Google is about. Google deals almost entirely with aggregate people: statistics, algorithms, collective behaviors, machine learning, implementation that's never about individuals but is about…

> it's an axiom An axiom which only applies to a certain percentage of cases?

Maybe an axiom as in being something we assume (because we can't/won't figure out whether it is actually true) this and base our decisions on this axiom.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#105

Post by azmodeus » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:37 PM UTC

tkgally wrote: post #85

fmajid wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More importantly it has no connection to the bottom line, which is why Google management doesn't seem particularly concerned with disquiet in that research group, as long as it doesn't spread to the rest of the company.

Google and other companies should regard rigorous research and discussion about AI ethics as long-term protection of their bottom lines. If they start launching products and selling services that are found to unfairly favor or disfavor certain groups of people, they will be vulnerable to lawsuits, government regulation, and damage to their reputations.

I think it is important to shift AI ethics to become more of an investment but that requires more tooling to evaluate AI ethics problems and the business risks.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#106

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:38 PM UTC

jmcgough wrote: post #19

dealforager wrote: post #9

No. Every time someone makes a big stink about someone getting fired at one of the top tech companies, it is promptly followed by an article like this. A trillion dollar company that hires thousands of researchers and consistently produces some of the highest quality research with real results is not going to implode from one person being gone. Another pattern I've seen is someone leaving a company, followed by writi…

Did you read the article? Gebru's firing isn't the focus of it.

[deleted]

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#107

Post by marcus_holmes » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:39 PM UTC

auggierose wrote: post #71

marcus_holmes wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an ego illusion. It hurts to admit that we're not replaceable, but we are. The job might not get done as well, or done in a different way than we'd do it, but it'll still get done.

That's maybe true for YOUR job. The more a job has a well-defined description, the truer your statement is.

My job title is "technical chap". I have no job description apart from "make all the things work". I could be replaced very easily ;)

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#108

Post by c-cube » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:45 PM UTC

throwaway316943 wrote: post #87

Nice try, but still a miss. Building assumptions into NN won’t work for anything complex like ladders and keys which according to this author are built in to human brains? Please. Yes, NN are still in their infancy but they are clearly foundational to general intelligence. They will probably require many additional discoveries about how they need to be connected and maybe even a few updates to the model of the neuron…

> Please. Yes, NN are still in their infancy but they are clearly foundational to general intelligence.

This calls for a big fat "citation needed". What we call neural networks have very little to do with actual neurons, so I fail to see how this is supposed to be "clear". And it's in its infancy since the sixties, really?

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#109

Post by marcus_holmes » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:46 PM UTC

MontyCarloHall wrote: post #102

Bakary wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both are true: there are supernaturally talented people and also an incredibly wide world. If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. We are also reasoning from the POV of our own reality. We see the people we did get, but it could be the case that we missed some brilliant minds that do exist in some alternative un…

> If you take an intellect so impressive that they are one in ten million, there will be still be almost eight hundred of those people in the world. Intellects aren’t fungible. Even if there are 800 Fabrice Ballard-level minds out there, I doubt most of them have honed their brain on the exact problems he’s worked on. You can’t just find another one-in-ten-million mind and put them to work on the problems of another…

There's a whole set of problems that people can work on. There's solutions for most of them. Some of those solutions aren't very good, but they're the best we have.

Fabrice Bellard has worked on a subset of the problems we have. He's created good solutions for them. But if he hadn't, we would have some other, lesser, solution for those problems. Like we do for the problems he hasn't worked on.

No, you can't expect comparable results. But you can expect some results.

Re: Is Google’s AI research about to implode?

#110

Post by refenestrator » Tue, Feb 23, 2021, 2:48 PM UTC

dominotw wrote: post #94

paulsutter wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of general interest, Jeff Dean’s comment on why the Gebru paper didn’t meet Google’s publication guidelines: “Highlighting risks without pointing out methods for researchers and developers to understand and mitigate those risks misses the mark on helping with these problems” from https://docs.google.com/document/d/1f2kYWDXwhzYnq8ebVtuk9CqQ...

Isn't that asking too much. How would a researcher also know how mitigate the problems they identified.

The problems they identified have been known for years and there are lots of papers exploring how to mitigate.

The whole paper was a nothing burger wrapped in social justice language with asides about how global warming is Actually Racism because of disparate impact (interesting, not an ML topic).

If the problems aren't novel and you're proposing zero solutions, it shouldn't be a paper.