Researchers propose a new interdisciplinary subfield called “Machine Behaviour” • Hacker News Board

Re: Researchers propose a new interdisciplinary subfield called “Machine Behaviour”

#51

Post by notbob » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 6:47 PM UTC

radarsat1 wrote: post #47

notbob wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The papers are mostly good, actually Not surprising. Computer scientists have a bit of experience with computation, after all. It would actually be more concerning if a bunch of new stuff was being invented whole cloth. > but it's sort of putting the cart before the horse. Not at all. ML algorithms are just fucking algorithms and computer scientists have been thinking about what it means for an algorithm to be corr…

Ah yes those money grubbing philosophers.

I don't think it's money grubbing. I think it's a genuine attempt to connect with the zeitgeist and be relevant, paired with a fundamental misunderstanding about what's actually happening inside self-driving groups.

But the intention doesn't really matter.

What matters is the utility of the output!

In fact, somewhat ironically, I think a lot of the good work on ethics for AI is coming out of engineering, business, statistics, and economics departments. And those academic departments to do be a bit more "money grubbing" relative to philosophy :-)

Re: Researchers propose a new interdisciplinary subfield called “Machine Behaviour”

#52

Post by notbob » Sat, Apr 27, 2019, 6:56 PM UTC

bigred100 wrote: post #50

high_derivative wrote: post #15

My highly cynical take as someone researching in ML is that all these interdisciplinary AI studies, AI policy, etc are mostly grifters trying to get in on the gold-rush. What has AI policy produced so far, really? Algorithm analysis and safety research is done on the algorithmic side, not on the policy side. Every time I have read an AI policy paper, it has been listings of desirable properties with absolutely no inp…

I don’t mean to sound entirely too rude, but I want to ask the following hypothetical question. You are working at a research lab at a research university. You need to hire someone who is going to help you do research on new techniques for interpretable machine learning. Do you hire 1. Someone with extensive knowledge of machine learning, and a much smaller (but existent) interest in the societal importance of interp…

I work in this space and regularly interact with folks on both sides of that aisle.

I would hire both. If you want to do anything serious in the space, you need the resources to hire a well-rounded team. Maybe in five years this won't be true, but at the moment this is a space where technological capabilities are driving policy making decisions.

I had to choose one, the answer depends on if this is a soldier or a general.

If it's a soldier ($ or $$ salary), I would choose a CS PhD who has demonstrated an interest and aptitude for learning about policy. There are a lot of opportunities for that person to learn about policy including part-time fellowships with think tanks and federal agencies, sometimes even embedded in a lawmaker's staff. Conversely, taking a policy person and getting them to the point where they can adequately process the fire hose of AI fairness/safety/explainability research is going to require a lot more effort.

If it's a general ($$$ or $$$$ salary), I would choose whoever I could manage to hire that has the most influence in whatever agency or legislature is most relevant to the policies I want to push.

But again, especially for soldiers, it's a false choice, and if you find yourself in a situation where you have to make this choice then you need to focus on fundraising instead of your first hire...

Re: Researchers propose a new interdisciplinary subfield called “Machine Behaviour”

#53

Post by drb91 » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 5:28 AM UTC

aricblunk wrote: post #40

drb91 wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey, at least I don't sell snake oil.

Are you sure you aren't conflating AGI with AI? If not, could you define AI?

AI is “do you wish you had a slave”. I can’t think of any other definition that fits all the use cases. It’s also more obvious why it’s a snake oil term: slaves are people you can communicate meaningfully with in both directions.

Re: Researchers propose a new interdisciplinary subfield called “Machine Behaviour”

#54

Post by ThalesX » Sun, Apr 28, 2019, 7:57 AM UTC

notbob wrote: post #38

currymj wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

a common pattern I see in papers written by people on the technical side is: "The correct way of ensuring algorithmic fairness is X" where X is something they already happened to work on. In various papers X could be robust optimization, differential privacy, causal inference, adversarial training, etc. The papers are mostly good, actually, but it's sort of putting the cart before the horse. I think there might be le…

> The papers are mostly good, actually Not surprising. Computer scientists have a bit of experience with computation, after all. It would actually be more concerning if a bunch of new stuff was being invented whole cloth. > but it's sort of putting the cart before the horse. Not at all. ML algorithms are just fucking algorithms and computer scientists have been thinking about what it means for an algorithm to be corr…

> Philosophers are rarely interested in honest-to-god engineering ethics [...]

Would you mind expanding on this? I would expect representatives of a field of knowledge that has an area called 'ethics' to be more concerned about ethics than your run of the mill engineer.