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What I find interesting is that Hacker News manages to hold the same mentality that there's a startup bubble, this time it's not different, while at the same ti

What I find interesting is that Hacker News manages to hold the same mentality that there's a startup bubble, this time it's not different, while at the same time holding the mentality that AI is going to take over, this time it's different (in aggregate, I'm not saying everyone holds this view, this seems to be the plurality view). Many of the same arguments used to argue how AI is different this time around are the exact same arguments you can use to justify that it's not a startup bubble this time. My guess is something about the fantastical sci-fi aspect of AI captures the deep-seated imagination and wishful-thinking of many engineers, whereas the rush of money, business-people, and focus on sales/growth aspect of startups draws out deep-seated disdain from many engineers.

mrqwerty 10y ago
Or perhaps this time it is different. I think most think human level AI is not just around the corner. But automating a lot of the mental processes that constitute work? Possibly not very far away at all. That's where the hype is coming from. And for me I think there is a very good chance the hype is justified...
ddt_Osprey 10y ago
I might take a guess that, when sensational amounts of money are flying to and fro, there's a degree of truth to the fact that humans trading imaginary numbers or paper tokens or what-have-you, is a centuries old game that consistently harkens back to simple gambling. Taking calculated risks, and swindling fools with asymetric information is just stupid human tricks in redux. Machines that get up do things for us with minimal hand-holding really would be something unprecedented, new and different. And truly disruptive to the economy, moreso than the boiler room poker games of investment and High Finance, which are disruptive, if only beneficial to a self-serving few. Whether the reality of such a thing mirrors our imaginations, if it ever happens, things might get really, really weird thereafter, and good luck at guessing how. We'll be confronted by deceptive situations, while circumstances change around us. And within that mix of confusion, add to that the already comedic/tragic stupid human tricks that continue to beguile so many.
tim333 10y ago
The reason HN probably thinks that with the startup bubble, this time it's not different, while with AI, this time it's different is because that's what the facts indicate and HN tends to be well informed. The bubble is same old and it's debateable whether it even is a proper bubble or just some frothy valuations. Such periods of overvaluation have happened many times and will come and go. The AI thing is quite different. If you accept the human brain is effectively a biological computer and that normal computers get more powerful every year then inevitably there's a point when they get more powerful (in terms of processing power and memory) than the biological ones. This is happening over the next twenty years roughly. No one said that is happening before. It's a one off inevitable event that will happen once and only once in human history, of a significance comparable to the evolution of multicellular life forms say. It should be interesting to see.
- argonaut 10y ago
  Actually, the the facts show "this time it's different" for both. Every indicator tells us this startup boom is nothing like the past bubbles and is actually quite sustainable. (In fact your comment seems to indicate you hold this view, which is not what the HN groupthink view is that I'm referring to).
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  >If you accept the human brain is effectively a biological computer and that normal computers get more powerful every year then inevitably there's a point when they get more powerful (in terms of processing power and memory) than the biological ones. That doesn't give you anything like the right algorithms to run on the computers. MOore's Law has been ending, so that free ride to avoid taking asymptotic complexity seriously is over.
Houshalter 10y ago
Computers are millions of times faster than 30 years ago, let alone 60 when the field started. There are that many decades of new knowledge and research. There is a dozen times more funding than in the past. AI research is actually producing things of economic value now. And the field has moved past brute force search and dumb expert systems, to deep general learning algorithms. Of course this time it's different. The only question is how different? I would say that HN is cautiously optimistic about the future of AI, in aggregate. With extreme opinions on both sides, of course. But there are many skeptical articles that reach the front page, and there are many skeptical comments like yours at the top of every thread about it. The opinion also seems to be "in my lifetime" or "in the next few decades", not in the immediate short term future. That's a pretty long time, and a lot could happen in that time. Saying that AI will definitely not happen in that time, is just as overconfident as saying that it definitely will. Lastly, saying "people in the past who said 'this time it's different' were wrong once, therefore anyone who says that is wrong", is a fully general counterargument. You are applying it to vastly different domains (short term economic bubbles vs long term technology predictions). And you are glossing over all the details of the arguments.
- argonaut 10y ago
  > "in my lifetime" or "in the next few decades" is actually quite optimistic. You've put a definite timeframe on something extremely nebulous. I actually think the HN group-think plurality is quite more optimistic than that (next 10 years), however.
  - Houshalter 10y ago
    It's not that optimistic. Even if you assume a totally uninformative prior, it's still reasonably likely to happen in our lifetime. E.g. the copernicus method/prior gives an estimate of 50% probability within the next 65 years. And an even more optimistic prediction if you add other factors: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mxy/using_the_copernican_mediocrity_principle_to/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mxy/using_the_copernican_mediocrity_... You must have some strong additional information to make such a pessimistic prediction. I really don't know where you get the impression that the majority of HNers expect strong AI in 10 years. That's just ridiculously. I would guess maybe less than 5% think that. Yes there are a lot of optimistic articles on AI, but they are almost all about weak AI.
ludamad 10y ago
I think the best plan (for now) is to just have NN's et al as accessible as possible and have everyone try different things. It'd be cool to see accessible interfaces for pay-per-training on good hardware (TPUs?) tied in to some library. I think 'this time it's different' is right mainly in the fact that we can try things much more quickly, with a lot more people.
edanm 10y ago
The problem with taking the aggregate view is exactly what you run into - you get awkward, inconsistent world views. Most of the LessWrong style AI-safety people would probably heavily disagree with what you wrote, because you imply that AI-safety is a topic that matters now because "this time it's different". On the contrary, I think most people would say AI is still quite a ways out, as in a few decades, and that the arguments about it don't necessarily depend on the current state of AI. The state we're in is certainly seen as a warning sign, but not proof that we're a few years away from true AI.
studentrob 10y ago
I think it's that optimism is supported over pessimism. You're more likely to read optimistic comments about an undetermined thing than you are to read negative ones. Negativity about the future is generally downvoted or unsupported. Those who know AI isn't around the corner are fewer because it takes a ML researcher to know that. They need time to spread a message of positivity to the masses that while AI isn't about to be developed, there are still some really great things coming.
- argonaut 10y ago
  The plurality opinion on HN seems to be that it's a startup bubble (or at least it's a very very common opinion) - but this is pessimism.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    You're right. Different communities will have different views. I'd argue we call it a bubble because we perceive other people's excessive optimism as potentially harmful. Therefore, saying bubble is optimistic for us on HN If you can't jump through the mental hoops I'm making I don't blame you. This is just what my brain thinks
  - erikpukinskis 10y ago
    There's a big readership on HN who are good programmers etc working for tech companies, but who don't have a lot of skills outside of that. Many are reliant on a good job in order to feel like they have social standing as well. The biggest existential threat for them is some kind of employment bubble. That fear washes over this space fairly regularly, in waves every 2 years or so. I don't think the bubble is a deeply held belief, or even something that most of us intrinsically care about. It's just human nature to be paranoid about your food source.
DigitalJack 10y ago
I think what captures the imagination is that, fundamentally, AI is about understanding ourselves, what makes us tick. If we can reproduce the human mind, we can understand the human mind. Up for debate which will come first. I think this is what drives people though, even though they may not have thought about it that way or tried to articulate it that way in the thinking.
- studentrob 10y ago
  Yes! I agree 100% and have been saying the same thing. I too wonder if seeking AI is just another quest for the answer to whether things are fated or not, or whether true randomness exists or not. Are we just atoms bouncing around? Or is there something else? I think most people will agree there is something more. I don't think the computerized AI as we perceive building it today will result in some new AI being. And, that should not stop us from trying, however, we ought to be honest with our fellow humans in the non ML world that true AI is not around the corner. As soon as we collectively make a promise on which we can't deliver, and the public realizes that, our funding dries up. 2001 wasn't a bubble because computers and the internet aren't awesome. It was a bubble because we told people that tech would be awesome in 2001. In reality, it became awesome gradually and we're now in 2016 at the point of realizing 2001's promises. Under promise, over deliver = stability Over promise, under deliver = instability
  - eli_gottlieb 10y ago
    Of course we're just atoms bouncing around. The interesting parts are what sorts of atoms you need and how, precisely, they bounce around.
    - studentrob 10y ago
      OK, but if we're just atoms that obey physics, where does free will come into play? Neurons make electrical impulses or something right? How do we control that so that it is possible that we could both choose to eat a hamburger or a pizza?
gaius 10y ago
he mentality that AI is going to take over, this time it's different (in aggregate, I'm not saying everyone holds this view Do you remember the saying that it's very difficult to make someone understand something if their salary depends on NOT understanding it? "Data Science" is the latest hot industry to be in, if you can keep the hype going, promise some miracles of machine learning then you can score a big payday. That's what's really happening here.
- studentrob 10y ago
  You can't keep hype without some actual successes. If everyone gets on the hype train without researching where it is going it'll overheat Which I guess is bound to happen. But, it is possible to fight those forces by critiquing frauds and prolong these "ai golden years" as long as we can in order to promote more advances
  - gaius 10y ago
    Sure you can, for a few years, the trick is to time your exit just before you have to deliver, and just as the next tech fashion is getting started. The Cloud guys are doing the same thing, right now. As are the DevOps snake oil salesmen. In fact if you can pull off DevOps Machine Learning in the Cloud, you will make a fortune before the music stops.
    - studentrob 10y ago
      In my experience, actively working in a field gives decent insight into direction. Then again I was still in school during dot com so not sure what happened there. If you're investing yeah timing's tricky for sure And perhaps that's true for starting a business as well. I'm simply speaking as a lowly employee who drifts where my nose takes me
      - gaius 10y ago
        In this game being an employee is no different from being an investor, you need to sense which way the wind is blowing and position yourself accordingly. Here's an example, there is no cloud. It's just a computer somewhere else that you rent time on. They were doing this in the 1970s when they were called computer bureaus. But put the right buzzwords on your CV and KER-CHING!

mrqwerty 10y ago

Or perhaps this time it is different. I think most think human level AI is not just around the corner. But automating a lot of the mental processes that constitute work? Possibly not very far away at all. That's where the hype is coming from. And for me I think there is a very good chance the hype is justified...

ddt_Osprey 10y ago

I might take a guess that, when sensational amounts of money are flying to and fro, there's a degree of truth to the fact that humans trading imaginary numbers or paper tokens or what-have-you, is a centuries old game that consistently harkens back to simple gambling. Taking calculated risks, and swindling fools with asymetric information is just stupid human tricks in redux. Machines that get up do things for us with minimal hand-holding really would be something unprecedented, new and different. And truly disruptive to the economy, moreso than the boiler room poker games of investment and High Finance, which are disruptive, if only beneficial to a self-serving few. Whether the reality of such a thing mirrors our imaginations, if it ever happens, things might get really, really weird thereafter, and good luck at guessing how. We'll be confronted by deceptive situations, while circumstances change around us. And within that mix of confusion, add to that the already comedic/tragic stupid human tricks that continue to beguile so many.

tim333 10y ago

The reason HN probably thinks that with the startup bubble, this time it's not different, while with AI, this time it's different is because that's what the facts indicate and HN tends to be well informed. The bubble is same old and it's debateable whether it even is a proper bubble or just some frothy valuations. Such periods of overvaluation have happened many times and will come and go. The AI thing is quite different. If you accept the human brain is effectively a biological computer and that normal computers get more powerful every year then inevitably there's a point when they get more powerful (in terms of processing power and memory) than the biological ones. This is happening over the next twenty years roughly. No one said that is happening before. It's a one off inevitable event that will happen once and only once in human history, of a significance comparable to the evolution of multicellular life forms say. It should be interesting to see.

argonaut 10y ago
Actually, the the facts show "this time it's different" for both. Every indicator tells us this startup boom is nothing like the past bubbles and is actually quite sustainable. (In fact your comment seems to indicate you hold this view, which is not what the HN groupthink view is that I'm referring to).
eli_gottlieb 10y ago
>If you accept the human brain is effectively a biological computer and that normal computers get more powerful every year then inevitably there's a point when they get more powerful (in terms of processing power and memory) than the biological ones. That doesn't give you anything like the right algorithms to run on the computers. MOore's Law has been ending, so that free ride to avoid taking asymptotic complexity seriously is over.

Houshalter 10y ago

Computers are millions of times faster than 30 years ago, let alone 60 when the field started. There are that many decades of new knowledge and research. There is a dozen times more funding than in the past. AI research is actually producing things of economic value now. And the field has moved past brute force search and dumb expert systems, to deep general learning algorithms. Of course this time it's different. The only question is how different? I would say that HN is cautiously optimistic about the future of AI, in aggregate. With extreme opinions on both sides, of course. But there are many skeptical articles that reach the front page, and there are many skeptical comments like yours at the top of every thread about it. The opinion also seems to be "in my lifetime" or "in the next few decades", not in the immediate short term future. That's a pretty long time, and a lot could happen in that time. Saying that AI will definitely not happen in that time, is just as overconfident as saying that it definitely will. Lastly, saying "people in the past who said 'this time it's different' were wrong once, therefore anyone who says that is wrong", is a fully general counterargument. You are applying it to vastly different domains (short term economic bubbles vs long term technology predictions). And you are glossing over all the details of the arguments.

argonaut 10y ago
> "in my lifetime" or "in the next few decades" is actually quite optimistic. You've put a definite timeframe on something extremely nebulous. I actually think the HN group-think plurality is quite more optimistic than that (next 10 years), however.
- Houshalter 10y ago
  It's not that optimistic. Even if you assume a totally uninformative prior, it's still reasonably likely to happen in our lifetime. E.g. the copernicus method/prior gives an estimate of 50% probability within the next 65 years. And an even more optimistic prediction if you add other factors: http://lesswrong.com/lw/mxy/using_the_copernican_mediocrity_principle_to/ http://lesswrong.com/lw/mxy/using_the_copernican_mediocrity_... You must have some strong additional information to make such a pessimistic prediction. I really don't know where you get the impression that the majority of HNers expect strong AI in 10 years. That's just ridiculously. I would guess maybe less than 5% think that. Yes there are a lot of optimistic articles on AI, but they are almost all about weak AI.

ludamad 10y ago

I think the best plan (for now) is to just have NN's et al as accessible as possible and have everyone try different things. It'd be cool to see accessible interfaces for pay-per-training on good hardware (TPUs?) tied in to some library. I think 'this time it's different' is right mainly in the fact that we can try things much more quickly, with a lot more people.

edanm 10y ago

The problem with taking the aggregate view is exactly what you run into - you get awkward, inconsistent world views. Most of the LessWrong style AI-safety people would probably heavily disagree with what you wrote, because you imply that AI-safety is a topic that matters now because "this time it's different". On the contrary, I think most people would say AI is still quite a ways out, as in a few decades, and that the arguments about it don't necessarily depend on the current state of AI. The state we're in is certainly seen as a warning sign, but not proof that we're a few years away from true AI.

studentrob 10y ago

I think it's that optimism is supported over pessimism. You're more likely to read optimistic comments about an undetermined thing than you are to read negative ones. Negativity about the future is generally downvoted or unsupported. Those who know AI isn't around the corner are fewer because it takes a ML researcher to know that. They need time to spread a message of positivity to the masses that while AI isn't about to be developed, there are still some really great things coming.

argonaut 10y ago
The plurality opinion on HN seems to be that it's a startup bubble (or at least it's a very very common opinion) - but this is pessimism.
- studentrob 10y ago
  You're right. Different communities will have different views. I'd argue we call it a bubble because we perceive other people's excessive optimism as potentially harmful. Therefore, saying bubble is optimistic for us on HN If you can't jump through the mental hoops I'm making I don't blame you. This is just what my brain thinks
- erikpukinskis 10y ago
  There's a big readership on HN who are good programmers etc working for tech companies, but who don't have a lot of skills outside of that. Many are reliant on a good job in order to feel like they have social standing as well. The biggest existential threat for them is some kind of employment bubble. That fear washes over this space fairly regularly, in waves every 2 years or so. I don't think the bubble is a deeply held belief, or even something that most of us intrinsically care about. It's just human nature to be paranoid about your food source.

DigitalJack 10y ago

I think what captures the imagination is that, fundamentally, AI is about understanding ourselves, what makes us tick. If we can reproduce the human mind, we can understand the human mind. Up for debate which will come first. I think this is what drives people though, even though they may not have thought about it that way or tried to articulate it that way in the thinking.

studentrob 10y ago
Yes! I agree 100% and have been saying the same thing. I too wonder if seeking AI is just another quest for the answer to whether things are fated or not, or whether true randomness exists or not. Are we just atoms bouncing around? Or is there something else? I think most people will agree there is something more. I don't think the computerized AI as we perceive building it today will result in some new AI being. And, that should not stop us from trying, however, we ought to be honest with our fellow humans in the non ML world that true AI is not around the corner. As soon as we collectively make a promise on which we can't deliver, and the public realizes that, our funding dries up. 2001 wasn't a bubble because computers and the internet aren't awesome. It was a bubble because we told people that tech would be awesome in 2001. In reality, it became awesome gradually and we're now in 2016 at the point of realizing 2001's promises. Under promise, over deliver = stability Over promise, under deliver = instability
- eli_gottlieb 10y ago
  Of course we're just atoms bouncing around. The interesting parts are what sorts of atoms you need and how, precisely, they bounce around.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    OK, but if we're just atoms that obey physics, where does free will come into play? Neurons make electrical impulses or something right? How do we control that so that it is possible that we could both choose to eat a hamburger or a pizza?

gaius 10y ago

he mentality that AI is going to take over, this time it's different (in aggregate, I'm not saying everyone holds this view Do you remember the saying that it's very difficult to make someone understand something if their salary depends on NOT understanding it? "Data Science" is the latest hot industry to be in, if you can keep the hype going, promise some miracles of machine learning then you can score a big payday. That's what's really happening here.

studentrob 10y ago
You can't keep hype without some actual successes. If everyone gets on the hype train without researching where it is going it'll overheat Which I guess is bound to happen. But, it is possible to fight those forces by critiquing frauds and prolong these "ai golden years" as long as we can in order to promote more advances
- gaius 10y ago
  Sure you can, for a few years, the trick is to time your exit just before you have to deliver, and just as the next tech fashion is getting started. The Cloud guys are doing the same thing, right now. As are the DevOps snake oil salesmen. In fact if you can pull off DevOps Machine Learning in the Cloud, you will make a fortune before the music stops.
  - studentrob 10y ago
    In my experience, actively working in a field gives decent insight into direction. Then again I was still in school during dot com so not sure what happened there. If you're investing yeah timing's tricky for sure And perhaps that's true for starting a business as well. I'm simply speaking as a lowly employee who drifts where my nose takes me
    - gaius 10y ago
      In this game being an employee is no different from being an investor, you need to sense which way the wind is blowing and position yourself accordingly. Here's an example, there is no cloud. It's just a computer somewhere else that you rent time on. They were doing this in the 1970s when they were called computer bureaus. But put the right buzzwords on your CV and KER-CHING!