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I work in machine learning: your statement is questionable -it worked fine 20 years ago. DL is nowhere near the "breakthrough" people act like it is; the actual

I work in machine learning: your statement is questionable -it worked fine 20 years ago. DL is nowhere near the "breakthrough" people act like it is; the actual real world applications of it that non mentats might use appear to be the null set. And yeah, I don't count the corporate propaganda material about "autonomous cars" or whatever to be evidence to the contrary. Genome research: so far a big nothing burger. Zero impacts on average people's daily lives. The entirety of genome research results on the real world seems to be enabling people to eat more sugar without dying. Space flight reusability: dude, where's my space shuttle? Falcoln 9 isn't reusable when using its actual cargo capacity, and isn't cost effective when it is reusable; no game changer there. Neat trick though and it certainly looked cool. Environment getting better: citations needed. Doom porn abounds at the very least. Maybe they're all lying about melting polar caps, plastic in the oceans and insane levels of chemicals in the eco system.

virgilp 7y ago
Where by "worked fine" you mean it couldn't tell a cat from a swan. Nowadays speech to text actually works, translation is actually usable, iPad unlocks with your face etc. Did you put in any effort to remember what it looked like 20 years ago, before saying "it worked fine"?
- raducu 7y ago
  Why are you guys even arguing about this? IF ML works great, yeah it could have a big positive impact, but not much for the average person so far, meanwhile it does work for the chinese dictatorship, hedge funds, the military, the scummy corrupt politicians to influence ellections; self driving cars will be a HUGE benefit, but guess who will take the lion's share of that benefit -- the 0.5% that will own the tech; maybe a little bit for you and I, but the milions of professional drivers will be crushed. I'm not against tech, but the way it will be use to further re-feudalize the world and promote the accumulation of wealth to the 0.5% -- which will be terrible for the overall progress of humanity.
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    I guess we're arguing because I deny that there has been appreciable progress. Most of what passes for "progress" in tech and ML is simply adoption of old ideas, or improvements in lithography. Along with forgetting vastly more important ideas. IMO the most important real world idea in ML in current year, defined as "being used and changing how people solve problems" is not deep learning (God Bless Yann), it is Boosting; a 30 year old idea. For that matter, the most important stuff for future progress isn't deep learning either; it's a basket of ideas that hasn't congealed into a name yet (stuff like Volodya Vovk and pals, as well as Gunnar Carlson work on). All that said; I 100% agree with you, the fruits of supervised learning will entirely accrue to oligarchs, governments and other such dirtbags who have the databases to fit against, do not have the well being of average people in mind. If we notice at all, it will be via blackmail, creepy ad tracking and late night knocks at the door.
    - bryanlarsen 7y ago
      Appreciable progress often comes through the adoption of old ideas. Something that only works in the lab if you squint at it carefully isn't useful; something that only 3 people know about isn't useful; but something that works reliably in the field is useful, even if their are no appreciable differences between them.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  Speech to text and machine translation worked about as well 20 years ago as it does now. Dunno where you were then. IPad unlocking with your face: what amazing progress. I feel so futuristic. Obviously this great boon to humanity is equivalent to say, those delivered in the decade between 1900 and 1910 (off the top of my head; safety razor, zeppelin, radio, air conditioning, powered heavier than air flight, electronic amplifiers, cellophane, mass produced automobiles, Haber process, talkie movies). I think I'll take removing the last 20 years of environmental destruction and go back to using a 6 digit pin. Or a thumbprint reader. FWIIW Dweeb Learning still has problems with image recognition, and people still don't understand how it works. Pretty sure that "progress" was mostly people writing frameworks for video cards.
  - virgilp 7y ago
    > Pretty sure that "progress" was mostly people writing frameworks for video cards. Pretty sure you either don't know as much as you claim, or are knowingly claiming things that are blatantly false
    - scottlocklin 7y ago
      Cool story bro. Enjoy your iphone face recognition; that's pretty much all you got in the last 20. Seems like the Haber–Bosch process slightly more important. If you have an actual example of a past 20 years developed machine learning idea which has pushed the needle for normal people in the same way the Haber-Bosch process did (making an extra 6 billion lives possible); I'd love to hear about it!
      - virgilp 7y ago
        No I don't but I didn't claim that. Whereas you did claim that speech to text and translation were about as good 20 years ago. Basically, to use your chemistry analogy... you're saying "Haber Bosch was nothing new, Cavendish produced the same kind of results hundreds of years ago!"
        7y ago

virgilp 7y ago

Where by "worked fine" you mean it couldn't tell a cat from a swan. Nowadays speech to text actually works, translation is actually usable, iPad unlocks with your face etc. Did you put in any effort to remember what it looked like 20 years ago, before saying "it worked fine"?

raducu 7y ago
Why are you guys even arguing about this? IF ML works great, yeah it could have a big positive impact, but not much for the average person so far, meanwhile it does work for the chinese dictatorship, hedge funds, the military, the scummy corrupt politicians to influence ellections; self driving cars will be a HUGE benefit, but guess who will take the lion's share of that benefit -- the 0.5% that will own the tech; maybe a little bit for you and I, but the milions of professional drivers will be crushed. I'm not against tech, but the way it will be use to further re-feudalize the world and promote the accumulation of wealth to the 0.5% -- which will be terrible for the overall progress of humanity.
- scottlocklin 7y ago
  I guess we're arguing because I deny that there has been appreciable progress. Most of what passes for "progress" in tech and ML is simply adoption of old ideas, or improvements in lithography. Along with forgetting vastly more important ideas. IMO the most important real world idea in ML in current year, defined as "being used and changing how people solve problems" is not deep learning (God Bless Yann), it is Boosting; a 30 year old idea. For that matter, the most important stuff for future progress isn't deep learning either; it's a basket of ideas that hasn't congealed into a name yet (stuff like Volodya Vovk and pals, as well as Gunnar Carlson work on). All that said; I 100% agree with you, the fruits of supervised learning will entirely accrue to oligarchs, governments and other such dirtbags who have the databases to fit against, do not have the well being of average people in mind. If we notice at all, it will be via blackmail, creepy ad tracking and late night knocks at the door.
  - bryanlarsen 7y ago
    Appreciable progress often comes through the adoption of old ideas. Something that only works in the lab if you squint at it carefully isn't useful; something that only 3 people know about isn't useful; but something that works reliably in the field is useful, even if their are no appreciable differences between them.
scottlocklin 7y ago
Speech to text and machine translation worked about as well 20 years ago as it does now. Dunno where you were then. IPad unlocking with your face: what amazing progress. I feel so futuristic. Obviously this great boon to humanity is equivalent to say, those delivered in the decade between 1900 and 1910 (off the top of my head; safety razor, zeppelin, radio, air conditioning, powered heavier than air flight, electronic amplifiers, cellophane, mass produced automobiles, Haber process, talkie movies). I think I'll take removing the last 20 years of environmental destruction and go back to using a 6 digit pin. Or a thumbprint reader. FWIIW Dweeb Learning still has problems with image recognition, and people still don't understand how it works. Pretty sure that "progress" was mostly people writing frameworks for video cards.
- virgilp 7y ago
  > Pretty sure that "progress" was mostly people writing frameworks for video cards. Pretty sure you either don't know as much as you claim, or are knowingly claiming things that are blatantly false
  - scottlocklin 7y ago
    Cool story bro. Enjoy your iphone face recognition; that's pretty much all you got in the last 20. Seems like the Haber–Bosch process slightly more important. If you have an actual example of a past 20 years developed machine learning idea which has pushed the needle for normal people in the same way the Haber-Bosch process did (making an extra 6 billion lives possible); I'd love to hear about it!
    - virgilp 7y ago
      No I don't but I didn't claim that. Whereas you did claim that speech to text and translation were about as good 20 years ago. Basically, to use your chemistry analogy... you're saying "Haber Bosch was nothing new, Cavendish produced the same kind of results hundreds of years ago!"
      - 7y ago