Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
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Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
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Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#2So is Google now more appealing to academics than academia?
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#3Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends.
I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been thinking a lot lately about how certain kinds of thought and investigation are only enabled and supported by certain structures. The point of a university used to be being the highest pinnacle of thought. A place where people could have everything not related to intellectual pursuit taken care of so they could devote themselves to the pursuit of greater knowledge. Now that seems to be replaced by a corporate campus.
It's a cliche, of course, but how many breakthroughs of meaning are we missing out on because the brightest and best of our generation are now no longer seeking after truth, but instead seeking after a way to make more people click on an ad? Ah well, it's late, and as ever I'm post-sober. Best of luck to him and his team - I've enjoyed his lectures and papers. I hope they may continue, but I sadly suspect not.
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#4A related news is "Google acquires Canadian neural networks startup DNNresearch, aims to improve image and voice search"
http://thenextweb.com/google/2013/03/12/google-acquires-cana...
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#5Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…
I don't think you can accuse Google of short sighted commercial ends here. The team he is working with has already done really groundbreaking stuff that falls right in line with his work. https://plus.google.com/u/0/+ResearchatGoogle/posts/EMyhnBet...
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#6Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…
I would argue that Google has had the largest impact on information dissemination , since the invention of pen and paper.
Advertising is just a means for providing comfortable livelihoods to these excellent people. There's no better place for these people to be working. We got some spectacular output when some bright folks ended up working together in a phone company, better than any university. Why not Google?
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#7Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…
I think the biggest difference is that the knowledge gained in the context of a university is open and easily built upon by anyone else.
The saddest part of corporations replacing academia won't be realized for decades but it's that the death of knowledge is tied too closely with profitability.
The decision of what to do with one's life rests entirely in him or her. But we should ask as a society, what are we striving for? The same goes to how our society (I can only speak of the US) looks at teaching as a profession.
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#8Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…
To be fair , google are doing a lot more than "making people click on ads". There must be a lot of genuinely cutting edge research into machine learning,classification,NLP etc going on in there.
Google also serves the purpose of amplifying the power of great (and not so great) minds by putting so much information at their fingertips.
The ads part is just what writes the cheques.
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#9Sigh. I don't know whether I'm alone in being saddened that many of the excellent thinkers of our time, who once might have spent their lives probing the the very limits of our comprehension in their field, now end up comfortably turning their minds to the services of (in the long term) rather short sighted commercial ends. I can imagine that this sentiment is probably against the prevailing HN mood, but I've been th…
I've long felt Google's true mission is AI, the rest is just chaff for the investors.
Re: Geoffrey Hinton has joined Google
#10So is Google now more appealing to academics than academia?
For research requiring ridiculous amounts of processing power, large corporations have the advantage over most universities.