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Sure - perhaps alchemy in the sense that many practitioners are simply throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, but not in the sense that there

Sure - perhaps alchemy in the sense that many practitioners are simply throwing things against the wall and seeing what sticks, but not in the sense that there isn't anything real behind all the math or engineering. Many advancements in machine learning have significant backing in theoretical proofs that a given algorithm will result in unbiased estimates, or will converge to such and such value etc. On some level, the high amount of experimentation necessary in machine learning is not so much a sign that the practice is faulty in any particular way, but rather, that the world is a complex place. This is especially true when attempting to predict anything that involves human behavior. Long-story short - I'd cut ML some slack!

Retric 8y ago
Alchemists could do a lot, making gunpowder for example is non trivial. They simply worked from a bad model with little understanding of what was going on. Consider, lead and gold are very similar substances and chemistry lets you transform many things into other things so it must have seemed very possible. Unfortunately, I suspect the current AI movement is in a very similar state even if they can do a lot of things that seems magical it’s built on a poor foundation. Resulting in people mostly just trying stuff and see what happens to work without the ability to rigorously predict what will work well on a novel problem.
oldgradstudent 8y ago
From the talk, their main point about alchemy: > Now alchemy is OK, alchemy is not bad, there is a place for alchemy, alchemy worked, alchemists invented metallurgy, [inaudible] dyed textiles, our modern glass making processes and medications. > Then again, alchemists also believed they could cure diseases with leeches and transmute base metals into gold. > For the physics and chemistry of the 1700s to usher in the sea change in our understanding of the universe that we now experience, scientists had to dismantle 2,000 years worth of alchemical theories. > If you're building photo-sharing systems, alchemy is okay. But we're beyond that. > Now we're building systems that govern health care, and mediate our civic dialogue. We influence elections. > I would like to live in a society whose systems are built on top of verifiable rigorous thorough knowledge and not on alchemy.

Retric 8y ago

Alchemists could do a lot, making gunpowder for example is non trivial. They simply worked from a bad model with little understanding of what was going on. Consider, lead and gold are very similar substances and chemistry lets you transform many things into other things so it must have seemed very possible. Unfortunately, I suspect the current AI movement is in a very similar state even if they can do a lot of things that seems magical it’s built on a poor foundation. Resulting in people mostly just trying stuff and see what happens to work without the ability to rigorously predict what will work well on a novel problem.

oldgradstudent 8y ago

From the talk, their main point about alchemy: > Now alchemy is OK, alchemy is not bad, there is a place for alchemy, alchemy worked, alchemists invented metallurgy, [inaudible] dyed textiles, our modern glass making processes and medications. > Then again, alchemists also believed they could cure diseases with leeches and transmute base metals into gold. > For the physics and chemistry of the 1700s to usher in the sea change in our understanding of the universe that we now experience, scientists had to dismantle 2,000 years worth of alchemical theories. > If you're building photo-sharing systems, alchemy is okay. But we're beyond that. > Now we're building systems that govern health care, and mediate our civic dialogue. We influence elections. > I would like to live in a society whose systems are built on top of verifiable rigorous thorough knowledge and not on alchemy.