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

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

#51

Post by ghaff »

kgilpin wrote: post #10
supahfly_remix wrote: post #2

> 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?

Last year, 90 degrees in the Humanities were awarded by MIT out of a total of 3,490. This presumably includes double majors. The largest subcategory was Economics, which is considered a humanity subject at MIT. https://registrar.mit.edu/stats-reports/degrees-awarded

There are also a fair number of other majors that aren't in the School of Humanities but also aren't what most people would consider STEM like the fairly large School of Architecture, which includes things like Urban Studies and Planning.

The overall number also includes a fairly large number of degrees, mostly masters, from the Sloan School of Management.

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

#52

Post by resters »

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…

I think you are assuming that weak AI is being touted as strong AI.

What has happened is that methods have been discovered to do many very useful things using weak AI that have significant useful applications.

However, since it's weak AI the building blocks aren't that different from the AI we've had for decades. What makes it novel and worth its own academic specialization is that understanding how to combine and utilize those building blocks is not trivial.

I'd argue that it's currently a bit more of an art than a science, but surely it will eventually become a science.

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

#54

Post by _ux1n »

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 appear "prominently" throughout the school. These conditions were scaled back after they were made public, previously kept private as a condition of the donation. (source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/news/answer-sheet/wp/...) He made a scholarship program called the "Schwarzman Scholars" modeled after the Rhodes. Now, MIT.

Look, don't get me wrong. I think donations to academic institutions are fantastic and he should be lauded for his generous giving. However I think it is worthwhile as a society for us to inspect these kind of actions a bit more critically. In my view, Schwarzman, who has no prior record of public interest, giving, or service prior to the last 10 years, is embarking on an aggressive campaign to formulate a positive legacy of his name with his money before he dies. It is artificial, transparent, and revisionist. 100 years from now, people won't remember Schwarzman for being a Trump supporter/friend/advisor and a wealthy Republican. As he has made certain with these donations, Schwarzman will be remembered as a benevolent philanthropist.

He has done an extremely clever thing. Even I can't deny that he has done a wonderful thing by giving away so much money. So who can justifiably criticize the intent behind his actions? No one, really.

To me, Schwarzman's donations reveal just how much of culture and history is straight up bought and paid for. 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. Remember that.

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

#55

Post by kamaal »

Puer wrote: post #13
corndoge wrote: post #9

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…

>>People want to be become machine learning engineers because it's the ... thing right now, but they don't want to learn the necessary statistics/linear algebra/optimization necessary for the roles.

Most people who will do these jobs, will stitch libraries into producing an application, like every other programming job. They will need passing knowledge of things, but only make things work.

This is for the same reasons why anyone build an web app is not writing their own TCP/IP stack and their own operating system.

As a matter of fact I wouldn't be surprised, If most people who are claiming to do AI are just writing SQL queries to get Averages and means.

In the hey days of Big data craze, people were using Hadoop and Pig to deal with files a few kilobytes in size, and calling it 'Big Data'.

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

#56

Post by nopinsight »

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.

The current field of AI might not yet be as broad or deep as the fields you mentioned.

The science and engineering of intelligence, however, holds potentials to be even deeper and more impactful than those fields. Intelligence underlies most human endeavors. Civilization itself would not be possible without it. It is the greatest distinction between us and other animals.

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

#57

Post by ChrisRackauckas »

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 isn't a method, it's a field of trying to solve problems through an almost pure computational mean. People tend to think of it as machine learning, but there's a whole range of mathematics and computer science related to solving these kinds of problems. In this sense, PDE-constrained optimal control of power grids, parameter estimation of pharmacometric models, robotics and automation, and bioinformatic advances like automated cell detection for enhanced next-generation sequencing techniques can easily fit under an AI umbrella. That makes it a huge interdisciplinary effort that can easily span a whole college, and something MIT is very well primed to succeed in.

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

#58

Post by rasmi »

gajjanag wrote: post #19
gradys wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's much of the math behind AI, but there's much more to building real things with it. It's a cross-disciplinary field touching: - Math, as you say - Software engineering, especially data engineering - Design - since the the math and engineering enable new kinds of problems to be solved by computers, there's a lot of unexplored design territory - The domains of all the input and output modalities it touches, like…

The funny thing is that MIT already has something called "MIT Institute for Data, Systems, and Society" (IDSS): https://idss.mit.edu/ I wonder how this is going to play with the new MIT Schwarzman College of Computing, and what each entity will choose to focus on.

>It is expected that the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL), the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society (IDSS), and the MIT Quest for Intelligence will all become part of the new College; other units may join the College.

http://news.mit.edu/2018/faq-mit-stephen-schwarzman-college-...

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

#59

Post by mattferderer »

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 was one of the earliest leaders in sharing course material online for free.

I wish they would take that $1 billion & invest it in modernizing online education. If you want to be a leader in AI, I argue you should open your doors to as many applicants as possible from all over the world at an affordable price. Discover a better way to improve collaboration & online learning. EdX & Coursera are nice but they seem to be halfhearted attempts. UNC's online MBA requires video conferencing for discussion & is much more engaging.

I guess $1 billion of server infrastructure & employees doesn't look as pretty though.

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

#60

Post by Koshkin »

nkozyra wrote: post #45
Puer wrote: post #29

Earlier 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…

> approximating or beating human thought

It must be noted, though, that "approximating human thought" is just one direction of investigation - and not the most important one at that; as interesting as it may be, it makes almost as much sense as trying to have computers resemble human brains. In other words, the true AI, when it arrives, will not think like us humans (even if at some level it might pretend that it does).

> ethical

The AI will be just as "ethical" as a computer or an assault rifle.

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