Turns out the Google AI's 15-day forecasts are for the weather in Mountain View. Which I can forecast 15 days out, too.
There's a little cautionary story I like to tell about predictions and probabilities There is a man living near a volcano. He has put up a sign outside his house for travelers, proudly declaring: "Will not erupt today. Accuracy: 100%." One night, after thirty years of this, the volcano erupts for a few hours at night, oozing magma on its opposite side. The next morning, the man is grateful that his house is fine, but…
Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
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Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#162This is great from a practical standpoint (being able to predict weather), but does it actually improve our understanding of the weather, or WHY those predictions are better? That is my issue with some of these AI advances. With these, we won't have actually gotten better at understanding the weather patterns, since it's all just a bunch of weights which nobody really understands.
I think this will be the next generation of science to some extent. The things we can understand and call explanations/reasons might be something involving 5 or 50 variables with not too many interactions between them. They have some unifying principles or equations we can fit in our head. I think many things inherently just involve far too many variables and complexity for us to understand in a neat theory and we ar…
This description isn’t how science has played out. When the scale changes often the model gets simple again.
Think about how complex friction is at a molecular level. But a single coefficient is a good enough model for engineers and a continuous 1d graph is incredible.
There is also no evidence that general AI models like multilayer perceptrons are good at constructing physical models from phenomena and lots of examples where they aren’t.
The opposite seems to have had more success. Someone who understands a system constructs a model and then lets a computer determine the actual parameter values.
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#163Turns out the Google AI's 15-day forecasts are for the weather in Mountain View. Which I can forecast 15 days out, too.
Yes, most people can predict weather in the dessert. But why do you claim this is what happened here? Or was it a joke? Because people took it serious.
Neither the article, nor the linked paper state that. But they have all the details on precision and condition.
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#164I'm friends with a meteorologist and the 15+ day forecast is the bane of their existence because you can't accurately forecast beyond a week so I would love to know how they are measuring accuracy. The article doesn't say and I know the paper is going to go over my head.
The paper seems quite readable to me and I also lack the training. But this point is adressed in the beginning.
"The highly non-linear physics of weather means that small initial uncertainties and errors can rapidly grow into large uncertainties about the future. Making important decisions often requires knowing not just a single probable scenario but the range of possible scenarios and how likely they are to occur."
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#165> A new artificial intelligence-based weather model can deliver 15-day forecasts with unrivaled accuracy and speed, a Google lab said, with potentially life-saving applications as climate change ramps up.
How hilariously dystopian. Instead of spending energy/power/influence to mitigate/solve/revert the problem, they’re actively making it worse to in the name of predicting how bad it’s going to be (to try and save themselves, which will ultimately fail).
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#166> A new artificial intelligence-based weather model can deliver 15-day forecasts with unrivaled accuracy and speed, a Google lab said, with potentially life-saving applications as climate change ramps up. How hilariously dystopian. Instead of spending energy/power/influence to mitigate/solve/revert the problem, they’re actively making it worse to in the name of predicting how bad it’s going to be (to try and save the…
Blaming climate change on AI seems like a stretch
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#167This is great from a practical standpoint (being able to predict weather), but does it actually improve our understanding of the weather, or WHY those predictions are better? That is my issue with some of these AI advances. With these, we won't have actually gotten better at understanding the weather patterns, since it's all just a bunch of weights which nobody really understands.
We could train AI models to simplify models in ways that require much less "intelligence" in the given domain.
For instance, we could ask AI to simplify the "essence" of the problems it solves in a similar manner to how Einstein and Feynmann simplified laws of Physics. With train/elevator metaphors or representations like Feynmann diagrams.
Of course, such explanations don't give the depth of understanding required to actually do the tensor calculus needed to USE theories like General Relativity or Quantum Electrodynamics.
But it's enough to give us a fuzzy feeling that we understand at least some of it.
The REAL understanding, ie at a level where we can in principle repeat the predictions, may require intuitions so complex that our human brain wouldn't be able to wrap itself around it.
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#168I'm friends with a meteorologist and the 15+ day forecast is the bane of their existence because you can't accurately forecast beyond a week so I would love to know how they are measuring accuracy. The article doesn't say and I know the paper is going to go over my head.
I would hope it's the 'persistence forecast' + x % better.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weather_forecasting#Persistenc...
IIRC the Metoffice in the UK does/did pay bonuses to staff based on modelling exceeding that criteria in a calendar year.
Again, IIRC, in the UK the persistence forecast suggests something around 200-250 days of the year have the same weather as the previous day.
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
> obviously It's not obvious to me. Care to elaborate? The only one that strikes me as "obviously" different is the Nobel prize that isn't really a Nobel prize, the one for economics.
It is not obvious to me either. I will point out that Physics and Chemistry are awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences while the Peace Prize is awarded by a separate Norwegian committee, so it is plausible that one would be more respectable than the other. Literature is a completely different institution as is Physiology/Medicine. The Peace prize and Literature prizes have far more questionable winners in m…
For now, this is not so much about being "respectable", as about the prizes given in the Sciences are not so bound to ideology or politics.
AlphaFold/AlphaProteo is genuinely a major breakthrough in biochemistry. Now if they start to hand out prices in Physics, say, based on it's importance in promoting some specific ideological agenda, then I would be wary. (For instance if they give the price in Physics for "making the the field of Physics more relatable to transwomen in the Middle East".
Re: Google says AI weather model masters 15-day forecast
#170> A new artificial intelligence-based weather model can deliver 15-day forecasts with unrivaled accuracy and speed, a Google lab said, with potentially life-saving applications as climate change ramps up. How hilariously dystopian. Instead of spending energy/power/influence to mitigate/solve/revert the problem, they’re actively making it worse to in the name of predicting how bad it’s going to be (to try and save the…
each time you use your computing device to make a comment on the internet, you're emitting CO2 and accelerating climate change.