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M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

nytimes.com

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Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#151

Post by lacker »

therealmarv wrote: post #132

ever searched for a job in AI? They ALL (at least in Europe) want senior developers with 5-8 years experience in all sort of areas and no junior AI devs. Anybody is offering AI jobs (international) for people who got out of college and specialized in that? Looking for my brother, he is specialized in AI and looking for months for an AI job in Germany.

It's funny how much of a different world Europe seems. In Silicon Valley there are all sorts of AI jobs. I wonder if there are more AI jobs in San Francisco than in all of Europe.

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#152

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

randcraw wrote: post #46

This sounds like a direct response to two things (mostly): 1) CMU establishing a 'department' of AI (where MIT had merely an AI track within the CS program), and 2) Kai-Fu Lee's recent book on the rise and inevitable domination by China of all things AI-related -- inviting a new 'space race' between the superpowers. (A 'brain race'?) Yet I can't imagine why an entire 'college' of AI is needed. AI simply isn't a field…

>> AI simply isn't a field that's deep or broad enough to warrant an entire college with a handful of distinct majors, like an engineering college or medical school.

AI is a field that's over 60 years old, that includes at least half a dozen sub-fields, by my counting (say, NLP, speech processing, machine vision, robotics iiish, game-playing, information retrieval, knowledge representation, inference and reasoning, etc, and, of course, machine learning), with, oh I don't know, out of the top of my head, 50 or so conferences, and about a thousand journals? Thereabouts.

That's broad enough and deep enough to warrant a couple of colleges alright. And if you take into account the age and breadth of subjects encompassed by many of the sub-fields of AI, you probably need a college for each.

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#153

Post by tim333 »

locacorten wrote: post #47

I have been and continue to remain very skeptical about all this hoopla about AI. Five years ago, I thought the hoopla about AI is just a fashion and it's all going to quickly pass. Two years ago, I thought it's a bubble that will eventually burst. At this point, I'm wondering whether what's happening is pure re-branding where we'll stop using the term CS and instead use the term AI. If I think of AI as CS, I'm ok wi…

There are reasons to think some isn't hoopla, mostly that hardware is getting to brain level capabilities in processing power so you can do cool things you couldn't do before.

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#154

Post by uryga »

tim333 wrote: post #153
locacorten wrote: post #47

I have been and continue to remain very skeptical about all this hoopla about AI. Five years ago, I thought the hoopla about AI is just a fashion and it's all going to quickly pass. Two years ago, I thought it's a bubble that will eventually burst. At this point, I'm wondering whether what's happening is pure re-branding where we'll stop using the term CS and instead use the term AI. If I think of AI as CS, I'm ok wi…

There are reasons to think some isn't hoopla, mostly that hardware is getting to brain level capabilities in processing power so you can do cool things you couldn't do before.

> hardware is getting to brain level capabilities in processing power

is it? not picking a fight, but i was under the impression that we're nowhere near. could you expand on this?

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#155

Post by throwsaway9192 »

clintonb wrote: post #149
throwsaway9192 wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hi Clinton, Author of edX here. At the time I left edX, the vast majority of courses used long videos and multiple choice questions.

Yes. Rather than assume, I still pose the question: what is half-hearted about that? What can be changed for the better?

* High-quality courses (or at least as good as the original few!)

* Open-licensed courses (as originally promised and intended)

* Real checks-and-balances and not-for-profit structures

* Investment in research in improving teaching-and-learning

* Commitment to integrity in results presented to the public, in respect for student privacy, and in general, a strong set of core values and to keeping what's working in education

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#156

Post by smus »

codekilla wrote: post #134
ryanmarsh wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wish top-rated institutions stoped pretending "Physics" means "the last 6 years in Electricity/Chemistry/etc..." - Someone circa 18-hundred-something shrugs The two things people dislike the most, the way things are, and when they change.

The success of statistical machine learning is more limited than may be obvious. Try to think of problems these methods can't solve, then try to think of problems they can solve. Which stack is thicker? Then ask yourself, for the problems they can solve--can they really solve them as well as humans? Machine Translation, I'm looking at you, Image Recongition--I'm also looking at you. If they can solve them as well as…

What? AlphaGo doesn't use ANY human data. And computers are performing better than humans on image recognition tasks.

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#157

Post by leoc »

perennate wrote: post #99
randcraw wrote: post #46

This sounds like a direct response to two things (mostly): 1) CMU establishing a 'department' of AI (where MIT had merely an AI track within the CS program), and 2) Kai-Fu Lee's recent book on the rise and inevitable domination by China of all things AI-related -- inviting a new 'space race' between the superpowers. (A 'brain race'?) Yet I can't imagine why an entire 'college' of AI is needed. AI simply isn't a field…

MIT's news article [1] has more concrete information. The NYT article is a bit misleading. It is a College of Computing, not College of AI. Also note that MIT has Schools (School of Engineering, School of Science, etc.), not Colleges; so this will be something different. For example, according to MIT's FAQ [2], EECS Department will likely continue to be part of School of Engineering, even as it becomes part of Colleg…

[Insert matrix management/neural network crossover joke here.]

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#158

Post by tnecniv »

mr_overalls wrote: post #35
Puer wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unfortunately, I think statistics will continue to be under-appreciated. All of my mathematics professors in undergraduate said that statistics and linear algebra are the two most useful fields of math to know and that dedicating time to studying them will pay dividends. It still surprises me when I apply for jobs today how few places, even financial or scientific firms, distinguish between statistics and mathematics…

How important is optimization? Like a lot of engineers I know, I took a few required courses in undergrad on linear algebra and stats. But I've never studied optimization. And I see it come up all the time on lists of central theory for ML & AI. . . Is there a classic textbook on the subject? Are there any free online courses that are considered good? https://www.coursera.org/courses?query=optimization

Optimization can be pretty useful. Most stats / ML problems are posed as minimizing a function subject to some constraints.

Depending on your problem, you might be able to exploit special structures to solve problems faster than just doing gradient descent. If you know linear algebra and stats, you'll be fine getting through an optimization book.

Boyd's book is canonical at this point, but might be hard to get through. Before you get to actually optimizing anything, you need to make your way through some chapters on convex analysis with little application.

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#159

Post by ssalazar »

_ux1n wrote: post #54

I'm conflicted on this. On one hand, academic donations are always great. On the other hand, Stephen Schwarzman has a record of giving large donations in exchange for naming rights. He gave $150 million to Yale to renovate the main campus center, called "Commons," into the "Schwarzman Center." He gave $25 million to his high school in exchange for naming rights bordering on autocracy, including having his portrait ap…

> If you have enough money, no matter how you actually live your life and what you do, you can just pay the right people or institutions, and you will be forever remembered as a good person.

Yep. The Nobel prize was created quite explicitly to assuage critiques of Alfred Nobel's legacy [1].

With 100 years to look back on, did the ends justify the means?

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Nobel#Nobel_Prizes

Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B

#160

Post by liftbigweights »

fermienrico wrote: post #126
danso wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because a press release has a different aim than a news article.

Excellent point, I never think twice when people insist on the original source. The motive behind the article matters and secondary independent / unbiased source can provide a more balanced and truthful perspective.

nytimes is as far from independent and unbiased as you can get.
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