41–50 of 181 posts
Aren't they jumping the gun, here? We'll need a general AI that can graduate high school first.~ I'm not sure why they need an entirely new college. Doesn't that just increase administrative overhead out of proportion to any perceivable benefit?
https://news.mit.edu/2018/mit-reshapes-itself-stephen-schwar...
Why link to the nytimes when you can link to the actual source?
College of Statistics and Nonlinear Function Approximation
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…
College of Statistics and Nonlinear Function Approximation
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Pretty sure MIT offers stats and linear algebra.
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…
The underappreciated parts of AI, in my experience, are more philosophical; about the nature of reasoning and approximating or beating human thought. About autonomous agents, non zero-sum games and ethical, non-maximizing functions. There's a huge overlap with logic (philosophical and mathematical) here, and I haven't seen that really broached at any of these big programs.
Yet I can't imagine why an entire 'college' of AI is needed. 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. Each of this college's AI degrees will span distinct problem or solution spaces? Not likely.
Maybe this was the only way to ensure the gift of all $350 million. Or to build multiple new buildings...
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 with it although I don't think graphics, comp. architecture, networking, and OS are AI. But if the rest of the world wants to call them AI, then let them.
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…
I don't see why not? We are a long way away from general AI.
http://noticingnewyork.blogspot.com/2014/10/plutocratic-clas...
College of Statistics and Nonlinear Function Approximation
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…
It has always seemed to me that it is correct distinction. Although there exists a branch of mathematics called mathematical statistics, by its very nature statistics is more like physics, in that it is trying to develop efficient methods of getting information about the objective world based on a certain kind of observations and measurements; and, of course, just as theoretical physics, statistics is highly mathematical, which often creates confusion regarding the actual subject of investigation.