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It seems that Elixir would be a perfect platform for Artificial Intelligence programming. Since Elixir is used for (1) functional programming, and (2) it uses

It seems that Elixir would be a perfect platform for Artificial Intelligence programming. Since Elixir is used for (1) functional programming, and (2) it uses Erlang's OTP Server for massive parallelization. But, I don't seem much activity in this space. What is the probability that Elixir will emerge as the "killer app" for AI development?

rpm33 8y ago
There is already some work out there since Elixir lends perfectly for parallelization of computation and is also immutable. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0h9DURSOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0h9DURSOo and http://www.automatingthefuture.com/blog/2016/9/7/artificial-neural-networks-elixir-and-you http://www.automatingthefuture.com/blog/2016/9/7/artificial-...
- rs86 8y ago
  It won't never be even close to native code because of the BEAM overhead, lack of typing, memory layout. It is suited for concurrency not computationally intensive workloads. Not to mention the use of gpus.
jeremy_k 8y ago
The problem is that BEAM wasn't built to excel at number crunching or doing computationally expensive work. A good explanation here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11214336/what-makes-erlang-unsuitable-for-computationally-expensive-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11214336/what-makes-erla... But I've been reading a lot about this topic too. There are a lot of people out there doing exploratory work to see if Elixir can be a viable solution.
rs86 8y ago
Elixir is suited for reliable and fast servers, not computing workloads... It could control other processes but it could hardly compete with native ML libraries. Also calling foreign code from Elixir messes with the beam scheduled if it takes more than a couple millis
eggy 8y ago
There’s the 2012 or 2013 book by Gene Sher, “Handbook of Neuroevolution Through Erlang”. I was working on writing some of the code in Elixir to learn Elixir, but gave up due to inexperience and I lost my interest in Elixir when the Erlang code resonated more with me.

rpm33 8y ago

There is already some work out there since Elixir lends perfectly for parallelization of computation and is also immutable. See: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0h9DURSOo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE0h9DURSOo and http://www.automatingthefuture.com/blog/2016/9/7/artificial-neural-networks-elixir-and-you http://www.automatingthefuture.com/blog/2016/9/7/artificial-...

rs86 8y ago
It won't never be even close to native code because of the BEAM overhead, lack of typing, memory layout. It is suited for concurrency not computationally intensive workloads. Not to mention the use of gpus.

jeremy_k 8y ago

The problem is that BEAM wasn't built to excel at number crunching or doing computationally expensive work. A good explanation here https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11214336/what-makes-erlang-unsuitable-for-computationally-expensive-work https://stackoverflow.com/questions/11214336/what-makes-erla... But I've been reading a lot about this topic too. There are a lot of people out there doing exploratory work to see if Elixir can be a viable solution.

rs86 8y ago

Elixir is suited for reliable and fast servers, not computing workloads... It could control other processes but it could hardly compete with native ML libraries. Also calling foreign code from Elixir messes with the beam scheduled if it takes more than a couple millis

eggy 8y ago

There’s the 2012 or 2013 book by Gene Sher, “Handbook of Neuroevolution Through Erlang”. I was working on writing some of the code in Elixir to learn Elixir, but gave up due to inexperience and I lost my interest in Elixir when the Erlang code resonated more with me.