are we living in the fallout 4 timeline?
M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
161–170 of 181 posts
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#162Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
My understanding is that you can't really compare processing powers between brains and computers. They work differently and are better at different things.
Nobody is going to be better at raw number crunching than a computer, but there's also no computer that can recognise patterns as well as your brain can. At this point in time, the computer vs brains argument is very situational.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#163What I am little surprised about is why institutions like MIT still limiting themselves to the depleting pool of talent in USA alone. Given the gov plans to even outright ban Chinese students these universities will not survive.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#164> The college, Ms. Nobles said, offers the possibility of a renewal for humanities studies at M.I.T., where students flock to computer science and engineering. Do MIT students major in humanities subjects, or is the department's purpose to make engineering students well-rounded through taking electives in their department?
Both. Students are required to take humanities classes as well as declare a concentration. Many often choose to minor or major in humanities alongside a science or engineering degree. A handful end up graduating with only a humanities degree. My high school physics professor actually graduated MIT with a writing degree before returning for a PhD in physics.
I myself double majored in Music Composition and Computer Science and have spent my career so far working at their intersection. The strength of their music department was a big part of the reason I applied to and attended MIT.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#165Earlier 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 two things people dislike the most, the way things are, and when they change. If this was slightly reworded I would love this quote. Is this from somewhere?
I heard it somewhere, I can’t remember
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#1661 billion for what?.
MIT is just burning money and is achieving nothing. For example, from the MIT site:
2015—Designing the bandage of the future. So, where is it?
2016—Making the first direct detection of gravitational waves reaching the Earth. It's funny because we are still clueless if the gravitation waves are true or not.
2017—Adapting a CRISPR protein that targets RNA, rather than DNA.. And yet, another research that is "for the future".
This happens when a failure of an investment has not consequenced.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#167This 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…
Wouldn't The College for Artificial Intelligence run itself?
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#168This 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…
> Yet I can't imagine why an entire 'college' of AI is needed
There was a point in time where this statement would sound true when describing computer science as a degree. People quite reasonably thought that CS should just stay under the math department. Yet look where we are today.
Who's knows how much bigger the field will become in a couple decades.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't doubt it and I don't doubt that M.I.T. will create an intensive AI college. My point was that a lot of universities, even distinguished ones, are recognizing that there's a real demand and hype for "AI/Data Science" degrees and in an effort to maximize enrollment and appeal they often minimize the mathematical and statistical requirements. I don't believe that you need an advanced degree to become a component…
Maybe it's just me, but having gone through all the stats and maths behind ML, it seems like ultimately the less interesting part (though to be fair, algorithm design is similarly uninteresting for similar reasons). We're talking about a lot of very long-in-the-tooth concepts that are still the basis of many, many approaches. They're important, but it's well-worn territory. The underappreciated parts of AI, in my exp…
It definitely is not just you. I spent my first two years of PhD wrapping my head around the stats and maths commonly used in ML, and realized that mathematically (as "theoretical" ML is practiced today), most answers are already provided in classical work of statisticians and probabilists. There are many fascinating questions of probability theory and statistics, but most have little to do with AI. In fact, in terms of the biggest empirical success story (deep neural networks), there are essentially no theorems providing a solid conceptual leap of understanding. Mikhail Gromov goes one step further regarding the lack of theory for neural networks (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g4Wl3Ggho6k), and provides a fascinating overview of his thoughts in:
https://www.ihes.fr/~gromov/category/ergosystems/
I am interested in the points you raise, but also realized that I would not find a good environment for it at MIT in EECS, for reasons that are rather obvious from the article's subtext. As such, the last year or so has been spent in a search for good alternatives in terms of research, and I am slowly finding answers. I am happy to discuss more over email.
Long story short: you are certainly not the only one who thinks that way.
EDIT: added a video link to Mikhail Gromov's actual views for better accuracy.
Re: M.I.T. Plans College for Artificial Intelligence, Backed by $1B
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 1) CMU establishing a 'department' of AI (where MIT had merely an AI track within the CS program) CMU's Machine Learning Department was founded in 2006, before the current AI hype cycle started. If this is MIT's response to a 'department' of AI, then MIT has been asleep for >10 years. Perhaps you mean CMU's new undergraduate AI degree. But that is not a new department. It's merely a separate major within the existi…
CMU does have a department of machine learning fyi. which is probably what the other guy was referring to since to most people ML = AI and AI = ML
Yes, but he said this is a "response" to that, which doesn't really make any sense because CMU's ML dept has been around for a while.