5 ms·

Not quite sure i follow. Do you mean like self driving cars, neural networks, mapping the human genome, or perhaps the internet? I guess IC's might be a good e

by jfoutz 9y ago

Not quite sure i follow. Do you mean like self driving cars, neural networks, mapping the human genome, or perhaps the internet? I guess IC's might be a good example, but the air force was really the only buyer that could afford them. I dunno, maybe we're moving to a new model. the 20th century way seemed to be to pour massive amounts of money into research at universities, then commercialize whatever whatever happened to work out. Corporations do interesting work, but they're sooooo resistant to change, it seems like their inventions always die on the vine. Kodak digital cameras for example. Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? Or microsoft their os/office money? or apple and phones? etc.

polishTar 9y ago
> Corporations do interesting work, but they're sooooo resistant to change, it seems like their inventions always die on the vine. Some do, others have been able to remain relevant for a very long time. Thankfully we have a societal mechanism to prune unproductive companies, it's called bankruptcy. > Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? Or microsoft their os/office money? or apple and phones? etc. So far they have. Google for instance started its self driving car project in 2009, at the height of the recession. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to dismiss the project as wasteful spending when everybody else was tightening their belt.
- jfoutz 9y ago
  24 billion in the bank (cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities), revenue up 2 billion ~10% from 2008. So brave [1] And they of course started the project by hiring the DARPA grand challenge winners. Which, yes, corporations can refine original research, but it's very rare they try something new. And if they do try something new, it's incredibly vulnerable to being defunded. Google is exceptional, kinda. I hope they'll get more milage out of their special project than bell labs did. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510030774/d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510... edit And more to the point, the kodak example is key. Kodak made money selling film. Digital cameras were a direct threat to selling film. Google can do some interesting things, but if anything useful is a direct threat to ad revenue, it'll be killed.
paulsutter 9y ago
Google is making tremendous strides in AI research, they're betting the company on it.
- acdha 9y ago
  This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an example of the public / private pairing working out well and generating far more new economic value than went into that foundational spending.
  - paulsutter 9y ago
    I was responding to this particular question: > Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? University and government research is also super important. Google publishes papers not code, whereas universities often publish their code and that's doing more to move AI forward than Google. But Google is willing to make large research bets too.
    - acdha 9y ago
      Yeah, I'm definitely not saying Google isn't doing important work. I just think this highlights the key role government funding plays in ensuring that businesses don't have to pay for all of that basic research and training. That's basically the answer to that question: Google isn't risking their core business on this because so much of the foundation has been set. If, say, in 2003 they'd gone to investors and asked for money to fund AI research it'd have been seen as too risky, especially since the collapse of the 1980s AI bubble was still well within living memory. Once NSF, DARPA, et al. had continued to fund the scientists, however, things matured to the point where it has a more acceptable level of risk to get in on a huge field.
      - 9y ago

by jfoutz 9y ago

polishTar 9y ago

> Corporations do interesting work, but they're sooooo resistant to change, it seems like their inventions always die on the vine. Some do, others have been able to remain relevant for a very long time. Thankfully we have a societal mechanism to prune unproductive companies, it's called bankruptcy. > Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? Or microsoft their os/office money? or apple and phones? etc. So far they have. Google for instance started its self driving car project in 2009, at the height of the recession. It would have been the easiest thing in the world to dismiss the project as wasteful spending when everybody else was tightening their belt.

jfoutz 9y ago
24 billion in the bank (cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities), revenue up 2 billion ~10% from 2008. So brave [1] And they of course started the project by hiring the DARPA grand challenge winners. Which, yes, corporations can refine original research, but it's very rare they try something new. And if they do try something new, it's incredibly vulnerable to being defunded. Google is exceptional, kinda. I hope they'll get more milage out of their special project than bell labs did. [1] https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510030774/d10k.htm https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1288776/000119312510... edit And more to the point, the kodak example is key. Kodak made money selling film. Digital cameras were a direct threat to selling film. Google can do some interesting things, but if anything useful is a direct threat to ad revenue, it'll be killed.

paulsutter 9y ago

Google is making tremendous strides in AI research, they're betting the company on it.

acdha 9y ago
This is the same Google which was started to commercialize the NSF-sponsored work that Larry Page and Sergei Brin did? The same one which hired many of the DARPA grand challenge winners to work on self-driving cars? The one whose AI efforts are being performed by a number of prominent researchers whose work and training was significantly supported by federal research grants? Google is great but I see them as an example of the public / private pairing working out well and generating far more new economic value than went into that foundational spending.
- paulsutter 9y ago
  I was responding to this particular question: > Are you thinking google would be willing to risk their ad revenue for a cool new tech? University and government research is also super important. Google publishes papers not code, whereas universities often publish their code and that's doing more to move AI forward than Google. But Google is willing to make large research bets too.
  - acdha 9y ago
    Yeah, I'm definitely not saying Google isn't doing important work. I just think this highlights the key role government funding plays in ensuring that businesses don't have to pay for all of that basic research and training. That's basically the answer to that question: Google isn't risking their core business on this because so much of the foundation has been set. If, say, in 2003 they'd gone to investors and asked for money to fund AI research it'd have been seen as too risky, especially since the collapse of the 1980s AI bubble was still well within living memory. Once NSF, DARPA, et al. had continued to fund the scientists, however, things matured to the point where it has a more acceptable level of risk to get in on a huge field.
    - 9y ago