5 ms·

Except for Elon Musk, who with all due respect, I believe does not count as an informed person in DL. It really bothers me that he (who is clearly an excellent

by nora4 9y ago

Except for Elon Musk, who with all due respect, I believe does not count as an informed person in DL. It really bothers me that he (who is clearly an excellent entrepreneur and human being in general) makes such strong statement on a topic he is clearly not an expert in and is so vocal about it too. Given the amount of influence and number of online followers he has, I find this irresponsible.

akvadrako 9y ago
He doesn’t say soon.
- nora4 9y ago
  See e.g. Smerity reporting on Elon's talk in NIPS 2017: https://twitter.com/Smerity/status/938994837323259904 https://twitter.com/Smerity/status/938994837323259904 as well as https://goo.gl/trX8SJ https://goo.gl/trX8SJ & https://goo.gl/aTMqv6 https://goo.gl/aTMqv6 What's your evidence for saying he does not say so? A bit mean of you to downvote without asking for evidence.
  - jacquesm 9y ago
    You don't know who downvoted you and who did not.
    - grzm 9y ago
      With the exception that it could not have been the person you replied to. (Or yourself, for completeness)
    - nora4 9y ago
      I assumed akvadrako downvoted that since the vote and the comment appeared very close to each other and both right after my comment. But of course, I surely could be mistaken. And anyways, downvoting is not a big deal and they have the absolute right to do so. It's just that stating why you disagreed or downvoted would be helpful.
      - Gargoyle 9y ago
        I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be the case that if your reply to a comment your downvote to that comment does not count. It was a pretty clever mechanism in that you could be certain any downvotes didn't come from people replying to you.
      - arstin 9y ago
        I don’t see why HN doesn’t require every down vote to have a comment. Judging from the sheets of gray on most threads, most down voted comments aren’t actually in violation of site policy, off topic, trolling, etc. It’s just a few little people disagreed. Which is fine! But it’s not constructive or interesting to just slap the commenter with your dick.
        TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Because then every other comment would have a stream of replies justifying the downvotes - replies which, presumably, would be regular comments, and thus susceptible to further downvotes (with comments)! In other words, this would be a huge noise generator.
  - akvadrako 9y ago
    I don't see any evidence in your links; why don't you provide a quote? Asking me for evidence someone didn't say something is a bit absurd.
killjoywashere 9y ago
Elon's training is in physics and economics. He understands linear algebra and programming perfectly well. He also understands that policy (economic or otherwise) won't be developed unless people put it on the government's plate. And he understands that government tends to be reactive - they are invariably way behind the curve in governing tech. So he's using his bully pulpit to get the troglodytes (a concept that maps nicely to many Republicans) and luddites (a concept that maps nicely to a lot of Democrats) in Congress to start working on the problem (for context, Ted Cruz of all people runs the Senate science and technology committee).
Animats 9y ago
I'm worried about machine learning taking over corporate management. Optimizing for shareholder value is a goal a machine learning system can work on.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago
  Yup. Machine learning driving the optimization loop, with humans working as smart sensors and actuators, responding to high-level commands. That's a pretty powerful AI right there.
hyperpallium 9y ago
Did he really say that specifically about the "current trend of deep learning using neural networks"? Surely he would have been speaking more generally about AI?
- nora4 9y ago
  See the references I give below; if he is talking about general trends in AI and is giving an estimate of 7 or 8 years for emergence of AGI, where is he basing it on? Is he basing the estimate on unseen breakthroughs (i.e. unknown unknowns) to occur within that 7 or 8 years frame, or is he talking about current DL techniques pushed to their limits? For the former, nobody can make a reasonable estimate (nature of unknown unknowns) and for the latter, most experts in the field seem to agree that that current techniques do not lead to AGI. (Like have you seen how hard it is do things like visual question answering (VQA) or text summarization tasks? These are much much simpler than AGI but like AGI do not lend themselves easily to supervised learning.)
  - hyperpallium 9y ago
    He talks about AI in those links, and does not mention specific approaches like DL etc. He's been around long enough to see the different approaches to AI, so as to not confuse it with a specific technology. I doubt it would even occur to him think AI=DL. Many people have made estimates for human level AI, without relying on specific technologies. e.g. Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy. For example, the lower part of Vinge's range included the 2020's - for his prediction made a few decades ago. Is Musk accurate? How can any of these be very accuracte, with so much unknown, as you note. Is he optimistic (er, predicting too early)? I guess so. I'll note that even for Musk's own companies, upon which he is the expert, and upon which he wields more influence than anyone, he is notably optimisitic in his estimates... Anyway, the answer to my question is: no, he didn't speak of those specific technologies, just AI. BTW some more in my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16350798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16350798

by nora4 9y ago

akvadrako 9y ago

He doesn’t say soon.

nora4 9y ago
See e.g. Smerity reporting on Elon's talk in NIPS 2017: https://twitter.com/Smerity/status/938994837323259904 https://twitter.com/Smerity/status/938994837323259904 as well as https://goo.gl/trX8SJ https://goo.gl/trX8SJ & https://goo.gl/aTMqv6 https://goo.gl/aTMqv6 What's your evidence for saying he does not say so? A bit mean of you to downvote without asking for evidence.
- jacquesm 9y ago
  You don't know who downvoted you and who did not.
  - grzm 9y ago
    With the exception that it could not have been the person you replied to. (Or yourself, for completeness)
  - nora4 9y ago
    I assumed akvadrako downvoted that since the vote and the comment appeared very close to each other and both right after my comment. But of course, I surely could be mistaken. And anyways, downvoting is not a big deal and they have the absolute right to do so. It's just that stating why you disagreed or downvoted would be helpful.
    - Gargoyle 9y ago
      I don't know if it's still true, but it used to be the case that if your reply to a comment your downvote to that comment does not count. It was a pretty clever mechanism in that you could be certain any downvotes didn't come from people replying to you.
    - arstin 9y ago
      I don’t see why HN doesn’t require every down vote to have a comment. Judging from the sheets of gray on most threads, most down voted comments aren’t actually in violation of site policy, off topic, trolling, etc. It’s just a few little people disagreed. Which is fine! But it’s not constructive or interesting to just slap the commenter with your dick.
      - TeMPOraL 9y ago
        Because then every other comment would have a stream of replies justifying the downvotes - replies which, presumably, would be regular comments, and thus susceptible to further downvotes (with comments)! In other words, this would be a huge noise generator.
- akvadrako 9y ago
  I don't see any evidence in your links; why don't you provide a quote? Asking me for evidence someone didn't say something is a bit absurd.

killjoywashere 9y ago

Elon's training is in physics and economics. He understands linear algebra and programming perfectly well. He also understands that policy (economic or otherwise) won't be developed unless people put it on the government's plate. And he understands that government tends to be reactive - they are invariably way behind the curve in governing tech. So he's using his bully pulpit to get the troglodytes (a concept that maps nicely to many Republicans) and luddites (a concept that maps nicely to a lot of Democrats) in Congress to start working on the problem (for context, Ted Cruz of all people runs the Senate science and technology committee).

Animats 9y ago

I'm worried about machine learning taking over corporate management. Optimizing for shareholder value is a goal a machine learning system can work on.

TeMPOraL 9y ago
Yup. Machine learning driving the optimization loop, with humans working as smart sensors and actuators, responding to high-level commands. That's a pretty powerful AI right there.

hyperpallium 9y ago

Did he really say that specifically about the "current trend of deep learning using neural networks"? Surely he would have been speaking more generally about AI?

nora4 9y ago
See the references I give below; if he is talking about general trends in AI and is giving an estimate of 7 or 8 years for emergence of AGI, where is he basing it on? Is he basing the estimate on unseen breakthroughs (i.e. unknown unknowns) to occur within that 7 or 8 years frame, or is he talking about current DL techniques pushed to their limits? For the former, nobody can make a reasonable estimate (nature of unknown unknowns) and for the latter, most experts in the field seem to agree that that current techniques do not lead to AGI. (Like have you seen how hard it is do things like visual question answering (VQA) or text summarization tasks? These are much much simpler than AGI but like AGI do not lend themselves easily to supervised learning.)
- hyperpallium 9y ago
  He talks about AI in those links, and does not mention specific approaches like DL etc. He's been around long enough to see the different approaches to AI, so as to not confuse it with a specific technology. I doubt it would even occur to him think AI=DL. Many people have made estimates for human level AI, without relying on specific technologies. e.g. Vernor Vinge, Ray Kurzweil, Bill Joy. For example, the lower part of Vinge's range included the 2020's - for his prediction made a few decades ago. Is Musk accurate? How can any of these be very accuracte, with so much unknown, as you note. Is he optimistic (er, predicting too early)? I guess so. I'll note that even for Musk's own companies, upon which he is the expert, and upon which he wields more influence than anyone, he is notably optimisitic in his estimates... Anyway, the answer to my question is: no, he didn't speak of those specific technologies, just AI. BTW some more in my other comment in this thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16350798 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16350798