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My story as a self-taught AI researcher

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Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#131

Post by itsmefaz »

ramblerman wrote: post #130
itsmefaz wrote: post #126

The problem with Emil's approach to learning is that it restricts his ability to learn anything that he has no intrinsic goal off. That includes areas like pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, finance, economics, literature, etc. Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation to just achieve a set goal i.e capitalistic motivation Also, Emil's approach to learning will create a flaw…

It's not a zero sum situation. Him taking this approach does not restrict someone else from studying what they want. Also finance... really? I'm not sure I would agree that is a subject with a less capitalistic motivation. I don't get a lot of the bitterness here. I mean not everyone here creates their own programming language, or would know how to write a database, yet we are fine using them as tools. Why must we un…

Not necessarily bitterness! I'm very happy for what he is doing. I'm looking at it very objectively, the problem is that the way the article presents his story is very flawed and incorrect. It sounds very much like a PR post. To address the Finance point, there are few areas of finance that is purely research driven and requires a lot of expertise of lateral domain like economics, mathematics. And once cannot grok that expertise in a year or so.. That was the point I was making!

> Why must we understand all the code and concepts to apply it?

That is one of the reason why our engineers are so sub-par because we were told to just shut up and write shit. We could have become a force to be reckoned with because of our expertise, because of our ability to solve complex problems. Yet we are living in an industry were there is huge disparity in salary, structure, and principles.

I don't necessarily agree with why one shouldn't understand the concepts, I'm more a guy who says why not?

Because, if you are standing on the shoulders of pioneers and claiming to be improving their work at least do it with compassion and honesty.

Sorry about the rant.. would love to hear alternative opinions!

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#132

Post by exdsq »

itsmefaz wrote: post #127
exdsq wrote: post #14

Survivorship bias or reality: 3 months learning FastAI, 3-12 months personal projects and consulting, 2 months flashcards of ~100 papers, 6 months to publish a paper What does he mean by ‘paper’? A Medium post? NeurIPS?

Submitting papers in conferences rather than journals.

Without submitting from a known university or research group? Seems unlikely to me. I have no doubt it can and has been done, but for it to be a regular thing such that one can recommend it in a 'Couch to 5k' style method? No way.

I have some friends in Oxford who are DPhil/Postdocs in highly reputable research departments specializing in ML and if they sometimes struggle to get more than a poster session at the leading conferences, with the addition of well known professors names attached, then there's just no way I can believe Joe Bloggs who just learnt python 12 months ago is able to do the same.

I almost want to follow his guide just to check.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#133

Post by TrackerFF »

newswasboring wrote: post #124

I'm not going to lie, his life story made me jealous. Extremely jealous. He did all the things I wanted to do (speaking in categories, not exact things) and is free to do more. It seems like in some cultures (mine is South Asian) there is a threshold on exploration time. Usually around the age of 28-30 years old (for some even lower than that, I consider myself one of the most fortunate ones). As I approach that numb…

What do you put into exploration?

Here in Northern Europe you're expected to do most of your traveling in your 20's, but we also have pretty decent vacations - so the solo / friend / backpacking type of traveling gets replaced with more family friendly stuff when you start getting kids.

I have lots of friends in their late 20's / early 30's that still travel the world, many times a year. But they don't have kids, and their travels (outside summer vacation) tend to be shorter, as in long-weekends etc.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#134

Post by itsmefaz »

exdsq wrote: post #132
itsmefaz wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Submitting papers in conferences rather than journals.

Without submitting from a known university or research group? Seems unlikely to me. I have no doubt it can and has been done, but for it to be a regular thing such that one can recommend it in a 'Couch to 5k' style method? No way. I have some friends in Oxford who are DPhil/Postdocs in highly reputable research departments specializing in ML and if they sometimes struggle to get more than a poster session at the lead…

The idea is to choose conferences like InfoQ where application type research is accepted. Like Build-X-using-TensorFlow, it doesn't have to align with standard research which requires formal education.

One also needs to be skeptical while reading such a PR post and not get swayed away by the hero's journey in it.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#135

Post by pingyong »

itsmefaz wrote: post #126

The problem with Emil's approach to learning is that it restricts his ability to learn anything that he has no intrinsic goal off. That includes areas like pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, finance, economics, literature, etc. Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation to just achieve a set goal i.e capitalistic motivation Also, Emil's approach to learning will create a flaw…

>Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation

Is that really the case? Apart from the obvious "maybe that's what they're intrinsically interested in" - if you start with a problem, try to solve it, and "pure mathematics" (whatever exactly that is supposed to be, anyway) is required to arrive at a solution, it becomes part of the intrinsic motivation. And if you keep solving problems without it the question that eventually comes up is "is it really useful at that point?"

I do however agree that if you're looking at someone who's qualification is primarily his "portfolio", you do actually need to check whether it includes interesting problems, or at least projects that are related to what you need them to do at your company. But if that is the case, I really don't see a problem.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#136

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

codebolt wrote: post #104
tprice7 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is logically independent from any claim about the value of formal education. I speak from experience that an undergraduate degree is not necessary in order to gain a firm grasp of undergraduate level math. Happy to elaborate if that is desired.

I'm sure it's possible to learn on your own, but I think most people would benefit from taking a few years of their lives to dedicate to learning surrounded by a community of teachers and like-minded classmates. Learning on your own requires a lot of discipline and dealing with solitude.

The OP is highlighting maths because deep learning in particular makes use of some light calculus and linear algebra, and the OP is probably mixing together AI, machine learning and Deep learning (as is common today, unfortunately, and I can't blame the OP for that, everyone's doing it).

However, there is a lot more to AI than high-school maths and I don't just meean -more maths. I mean knowledge, lore if you like. It's a field with a long history, stretching back to the 1930's even (before it was actually named as "AI" in Dartmouth, in the 1950's). A lot of very capable people have worked on AI for a very long time and have actually advanced their respective sub-fields each with leaps and bounds and it's not very sensible to expect new leaps while being completely clueless of what has been achived before. You can't stand on the shoulders of giants if you don't know that there are giants and that they have shoulders you can stand on.

Unfortunately, most people who enter the field today know nothing of all that, or even that there was an "all that" before 2012 (if they even know what happened in 2012; and to be honest, one wouldn't understand what 2012 means if one doesn't know what came before). So on the one hand they are not capable of making leaps and on the other hand they don't even know what a leap would look like. And probably think that a "leap" is a 10% improvement of the state of the art for a standard classification benchmark.

I agree with you though that what is needed to make leaps in AI is curiosity. Lots and lots of curiosity. Vast amounts of curiosity. Curiosity of the kind that you only find in people who are a bit zbouked in the head. Or just people who have a lot of time in their hands, to study whatever their fancy tells them to.

So- not the kind of person who flashcards The Deep Learning Book, if nothing else because that means the person doesn't have the time to, you know, actually read the damn book well enough to grokk it.

I mean seriously, what the fuck is it with the bloody flashcards?

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#137

Post by rsp1984 »

newswasboring wrote: post #124

I'm not going to lie, his life story made me jealous. Extremely jealous. He did all the things I wanted to do (speaking in categories, not exact things) and is free to do more. It seems like in some cultures (mine is South Asian) there is a threshold on exploration time. Usually around the age of 28-30 years old (for some even lower than that, I consider myself one of the most fortunate ones). As I approach that numb…

I'm not going to lie, his life story was written and presented with the precise goal in mind to make people feel this way. I stopped reading after half the article because I found it way too self-promotional.

So don't feel bad about your life just because someone on the internet pretends to have a more interesting one. Those people are usually just attention seekers and for some reason need the outside validation to feel good about their achievements. And remember that not needing that validation can be a strength too!

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#138

Post by newswasboring »

TrackerFF wrote: post #133
newswasboring wrote: post #124

I'm not going to lie, his life story made me jealous. Extremely jealous. He did all the things I wanted to do (speaking in categories, not exact things) and is free to do more. It seems like in some cultures (mine is South Asian) there is a threshold on exploration time. Usually around the age of 28-30 years old (for some even lower than that, I consider myself one of the most fortunate ones). As I approach that numb…

What do you put into exploration? Here in Northern Europe you're expected to do most of your traveling in your 20's, but we also have pretty decent vacations - so the solo / friend / backpacking type of traveling gets replaced with more family friendly stuff when you start getting kids. I have lots of friends in their late 20's / early 30's that still travel the world, many times a year. But they don't have kids, and…

It's not just about traveling. It's just one of the components. This guy was a teacher, musician, maker and now DL expert. And it doesn't seem like he is settled on that yet. He is still exploring what he wants to do. Changes his life to match his interests. I lived some of my life like that. Took some non standard paths. But it is getting increasingly hard for me to do this. Not because there aren't opportunities for me, but because it's getting unjustifiable to "society". And I know the usual line about "who cares what others think" in the west. Although it's logical in the west its not so in South Asia. Even if you don't care, your parents will and you will care for your parents. So it's inescapable. By Western standards I should be a totally free person, I am not married, don't have any debt, a high earning job which I'm bored by only 50% of the time. But these same things trap me. Single status leads to public derision in social gatherings (also friends get married and it becomes increasingly hard to be the only single guy in the group), my insistence on not taking on any debt means I live in a small rented apartment which it hard to be accepted in the society around me, a high earning job means I can never just quit because then I will have no social support due to it being a bad decision.

As I write this, my (admittedly limited) understanding of how Western society works makes me think these would not be problems but my biggest assets.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#139

Post by itsmefaz »

pingyong wrote: post #135
itsmefaz wrote: post #126

The problem with Emil's approach to learning is that it restricts his ability to learn anything that he has no intrinsic goal off. That includes areas like pure mathematics, theoretical computer science, finance, economics, literature, etc. Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation to just achieve a set goal i.e capitalistic motivation Also, Emil's approach to learning will create a flaw…

>Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation Is that really the case? Apart from the obvious "maybe that's what they're intrinsically interested in" - if you start with a problem, try to solve it, and "pure mathematics" (whatever exactly that is supposed to be, anyway) is required to arrive at a solution, it becomes part of the intrinsic motivation. And if you keep solving problems without…

That's correct. If one is solving a problem and its requires learning of complex topics, then those topics become a part of the individual's intrinsic motivation. However, the problem with his idea is that learning always requires a goal and ones that do not have any have no intrinsic value. My argument here is that learning doesn't have be attached to any goal and the process of learning can purely be a stimulating activity and might not necessarily have any capitalistic value attached to it.

Few ex:

Like, reading literature is a purely fun and mentally draining activity that might/might not have any goal attached to it.

Like travelling, is a purely fun activity and might/might not have any intrinsic goal attached to it.

I started learning Algebra out of the random, without any intrinsic goal. Because, it was purely out of fun. Playing chess is an activity without any intrinsic goal.

Re: My story as a self-taught AI researcher

#140

Post by krageon »

itsmefaz wrote: post #139
pingyong wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Those subjects require a different sort of motivation than a motivation Is that really the case? Apart from the obvious "maybe that's what they're intrinsically interested in" - if you start with a problem, try to solve it, and "pure mathematics" (whatever exactly that is supposed to be, anyway) is required to arrive at a solution, it becomes part of the intrinsic motivation. And if you keep solving problems without…

That's correct. If one is solving a problem and its requires learning of complex topics, then those topics become a part of the individual's intrinsic motivation. However, the problem with his idea is that learning always requires a goal and ones that do not have any have no intrinsic value. My argument here is that learning doesn't have be attached to any goal and the process of learning can purely be a stimulating…

> learning doesn't have be attached to any goal

For some people it does. Everyone has a different approach to learning and I think outside of the heavily regimented strata of traditional schools it would help everyone if we could celebrate that. Maybe that means not everyone learns for the sake of learning, but then again not everyone has to do the same things.

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