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do you really think that about deep learning? it has zero application or effect in my job (i don't see that changing for at least the next decade) and in my per

do you really think that about deep learning? it has zero application or effect in my job (i don't see that changing for at least the next decade) and in my personal life, it only serves to produce "better ads".

mayukh 10y ago
And what effect did a better ux manager have when pc's were used by a miniscule percentage of the population?
michaelbarton 10y ago
I would disagree. If you've ever requested a web page translation, done an image search, or spoken with an Alexa or google device I believe it's deep learning going on in the backend. I don't work at any of the large tech companies but I imagine they're applying deep learning as pervasively as possible where it can make a difference. That's not to disparage with your comment, only to say that while it might feel like a negligible effect on your life, I would say that it is non-zero. My completely uninformed and lay persons opinion is that we might not yet know what we can really do with deep learning yet. For example there were many years between the discovery of electricity and the invention of the microprocessor. The latter certainly required the discovery of the former, but did not logically lead to it. I use this example because Andrew Ng called AI the new electricity.
- panic 10y ago
  Google Translate didn't use deep learning until less than a year ago: https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for-machine.html https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for...
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    That's why it got that much better. Before it was barely usable, now it is positively stunningly good (with the occasional booboo but if they keep improving at the present rate that will become quite rare in another 3 to 5 years).
    - pakl 10y ago
      It's also stunningly poor in lots of cases. Largely because the system has no idea of the reality it's talking about.
      - panic 10y ago
        Yeah, the differences are kind of interesting -- check out the last section of this article http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/ http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/ for some comparisons of Google-translated Japanese text from Final Fantasy IV before and after the switch.
        nubbins 10y ago
        Thats fascinating how you can see the rules based formalism of version 1 translate go wrong in very different ways from the ML pattern matching version 2. ML creates a grammatical but nonsensical sentence from which little or no original meaning can be recovered. As someone in Japanese translation makes me feel better about my job.
    - dllthomas 10y ago
      > Before it was barely usable, now it is positively stunningly good That varies a lot by language. I keep finding its attempts at Polish painfully bad, and I only know a little Polish myself.
- coldtea 10y ago
  >I would disagree. If you've ever requested a web page translation, done an image search, or spoken with an Alexa or google device I believe it's deep learning going on in the backend. Web page translations (at least in Google and earlier) didn't do "deep learning" for ages. Plus most of those things, web page translation, image search, speech assistants, are pretty much either niches or gimmicks. Even if they worked perfectly, there would not be much to write home about. It's not like people think "my life was changed by the Alexa". GUIs, on the other hand, made lots of things possible that weren't, including whole new professions (heck, the web IS a GUI thing).
jacquesm 10y ago
> do you really think that about deep learning? Yes, absolutely. To put it bluntly: how many jobs do you think are affected by being deaf and blind? Computers are now able to see and hear, and on top of that they have become better at most classification tasks than humans. Those are game changers, this goes much further than advertising.
- firebones 10y ago
  What you state is factual. In the context of "as revolutionary as transistor", then I'd say yes as well. But when it comes to jobs, deep learning's impact is overstated. When I hear claims on how many jobs will be replaced because of deep learning (in contrast to the base rate of the long, steady slope of automation over the last 175 years), it's often about an abstract and simplified notion of the complexities of jobs outside the claimant's area of expertise. In such cases, it's useful to ask the claimant whether their profession is soon to be made obsolete. Will AI replace the pundit anytime soon? The economist? The enterprise programmer? The AI researcher?
  - jacquesm 10y ago
    The welder, the courier, the truck driver, the cab driver, the pilot, the GP, the gardener... I could probably make a really long list of jobs that will be affected, pundits are safe for now (but composers and painters are not), economists are probably safe too if only because they always seem to manage to weather the storm without damage even if they caused the storm and still failed to predict it. Enterprise programmers are safe - for now -, but keep in mind that humans already know how to teach each other stuff, as soon as programming becomes hard to distinguish from teaching by example that enterprise programmer had better watch out. Let's review this in a decade or so and see what happened.
    - ianamartin 10y ago
      Well, what do you mean? I think it's obvious that machines can, for example, weld better than humans can. But machines can't decide what to weld. For now in that arena, things are mostly still human controlled. I think your argument gets significantly weaker when you push truck, car, and plane driving onto the conversation stack. Even the best of self-driving AI automation isn't nearly as good as bad human driving. Yet. But the absolute best human weld joints are no better than the absolute best robotic weld joints. I think you're talking about two entirely different domains here when you conflate welders and couriers. One of those needs a human decision to place the components to be welded next it in front of a robot that basically does one thing. The other is an actual adaptive AI that's trying to make decisions on it's own. Yes, it's obvious that the lowest-wage and lowest-skilled workers are going to be displaced by robots the soonest. That's like arguing that the sun is going to rise. And as a society, we need to account for that. But arguing that the lowest hanging fruit of automation is going to displace taxi drivers and gardeners in the next 10 years is pretty nuts, even for HN.
PhasmaFelis 10y ago
> do you really think that about deep learning? it has zero application or effect in my job (i don't see that changing for at least the next decade) That was exactly true of Xerox PARC in the early '70s.

mayukh 10y ago

And what effect did a better ux manager have when pc's were used by a miniscule percentage of the population?

michaelbarton 10y ago

I would disagree. If you've ever requested a web page translation, done an image search, or spoken with an Alexa or google device I believe it's deep learning going on in the backend. I don't work at any of the large tech companies but I imagine they're applying deep learning as pervasively as possible where it can make a difference. That's not to disparage with your comment, only to say that while it might feel like a negligible effect on your life, I would say that it is non-zero. My completely uninformed and lay persons opinion is that we might not yet know what we can really do with deep learning yet. For example there were many years between the discovery of electricity and the invention of the microprocessor. The latter certainly required the discovery of the former, but did not logically lead to it. I use this example because Andrew Ng called AI the new electricity.

panic 10y ago
Google Translate didn't use deep learning until less than a year ago: https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for-machine.html https://research.googleblog.com/2016/09/a-neural-network-for...
- jacquesm 10y ago
  That's why it got that much better. Before it was barely usable, now it is positively stunningly good (with the occasional booboo but if they keep improving at the present rate that will become quite rare in another 3 to 5 years).
  - pakl 10y ago
    It's also stunningly poor in lots of cases. Largely because the system has no idea of the reality it's talking about.
    - panic 10y ago
      Yeah, the differences are kind of interesting -- check out the last section of this article http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/ http://legendsoflocalization.com/funky-fantasy-iv/ for some comparisons of Google-translated Japanese text from Final Fantasy IV before and after the switch.
      - nubbins 10y ago
        Thats fascinating how you can see the rules based formalism of version 1 translate go wrong in very different ways from the ML pattern matching version 2. ML creates a grammatical but nonsensical sentence from which little or no original meaning can be recovered. As someone in Japanese translation makes me feel better about my job.
  - dllthomas 10y ago
    > Before it was barely usable, now it is positively stunningly good That varies a lot by language. I keep finding its attempts at Polish painfully bad, and I only know a little Polish myself.
coldtea 10y ago
>I would disagree. If you've ever requested a web page translation, done an image search, or spoken with an Alexa or google device I believe it's deep learning going on in the backend. Web page translations (at least in Google and earlier) didn't do "deep learning" for ages. Plus most of those things, web page translation, image search, speech assistants, are pretty much either niches or gimmicks. Even if they worked perfectly, there would not be much to write home about. It's not like people think "my life was changed by the Alexa". GUIs, on the other hand, made lots of things possible that weren't, including whole new professions (heck, the web IS a GUI thing).

jacquesm 10y ago

> do you really think that about deep learning? Yes, absolutely. To put it bluntly: how many jobs do you think are affected by being deaf and blind? Computers are now able to see and hear, and on top of that they have become better at most classification tasks than humans. Those are game changers, this goes much further than advertising.

firebones 10y ago
What you state is factual. In the context of "as revolutionary as transistor", then I'd say yes as well. But when it comes to jobs, deep learning's impact is overstated. When I hear claims on how many jobs will be replaced because of deep learning (in contrast to the base rate of the long, steady slope of automation over the last 175 years), it's often about an abstract and simplified notion of the complexities of jobs outside the claimant's area of expertise. In such cases, it's useful to ask the claimant whether their profession is soon to be made obsolete. Will AI replace the pundit anytime soon? The economist? The enterprise programmer? The AI researcher?
- jacquesm 10y ago
  The welder, the courier, the truck driver, the cab driver, the pilot, the GP, the gardener... I could probably make a really long list of jobs that will be affected, pundits are safe for now (but composers and painters are not), economists are probably safe too if only because they always seem to manage to weather the storm without damage even if they caused the storm and still failed to predict it. Enterprise programmers are safe - for now -, but keep in mind that humans already know how to teach each other stuff, as soon as programming becomes hard to distinguish from teaching by example that enterprise programmer had better watch out. Let's review this in a decade or so and see what happened.
  - ianamartin 10y ago
    Well, what do you mean? I think it's obvious that machines can, for example, weld better than humans can. But machines can't decide what to weld. For now in that arena, things are mostly still human controlled. I think your argument gets significantly weaker when you push truck, car, and plane driving onto the conversation stack. Even the best of self-driving AI automation isn't nearly as good as bad human driving. Yet. But the absolute best human weld joints are no better than the absolute best robotic weld joints. I think you're talking about two entirely different domains here when you conflate welders and couriers. One of those needs a human decision to place the components to be welded next it in front of a robot that basically does one thing. The other is an actual adaptive AI that's trying to make decisions on it's own. Yes, it's obvious that the lowest-wage and lowest-skilled workers are going to be displaced by robots the soonest. That's like arguing that the sun is going to rise. And as a society, we need to account for that. But arguing that the lowest hanging fruit of automation is going to displace taxi drivers and gardeners in the next 10 years is pretty nuts, even for HN.

PhasmaFelis 10y ago

> do you really think that about deep learning? it has zero application or effect in my job (i don't see that changing for at least the next decade) That was exactly true of Xerox PARC in the early '70s.