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If you're listening to people who claim any one technology solves "everything" --- and believing them --- then you are the fool. There's no silver bullet. Deep

If you're listening to people who claim any one technology solves "everything" --- and believing them --- then you are the fool. There's no silver bullet. Deep Learning has made huge strides in noise reduction, image and video processing (self driving cars), lidar processing, medical imaging, etc, but it's not made any progress in knitting, tooth brushing, dog walking, or many other tasks ill suited for deep learning - so clearly not everything.

yters 7y ago
That's been the general vibe the popular tech press has been spouting for awhile. That NNs are somehow a major step towards AGI, which'll 'capture the lightcone of the future' to quote Sam Altman. At some point, we'll realize that AGI is the modern alchemy. Ironically, alchemy's penultimate goal was to construct a homoculus, which is essentially the goal of AGI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Alchemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Alchemy "The allegorical text suggests to the reader that the ultimate goal of alchemy is not chrysopoeia, but it is instead the artificial generation of humans."
- malux85 7y ago
  > That's been the general vibe the popular tech press has been spouting for awhile This is such a vague generalisation, I cant do anything with it, except maybe how about "nullius in verba", on the word of noone, or "think for yourself"
- criddell 7y ago
  Penultimate means the second last thing in a set. In the alphabet, 'y' is the penultimate letter.
  - yters 7y ago
    The last thing is 'profit'!
    - criddell 7y ago
      Ha! Makes sense then. :)
alanbernstein 7y ago
Your general point is valid, but I can't help pointing out that knitting may not belong in that second list as much as the others. Computational textile work is a niche, but fascinating, area of research. Knitting and crocheting are highly technical crafts, and there are opportunities to use modern computational approaches, including deep learning, in them. Deep Knitting: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02752.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02752.pdf I'm not going to read this paper in detail, it may not be a great example of a successful deep learning application - but at least it's not an absurd idea. Maybe not surprising if you're aware of the place of the Jacquard loom in the history of computer science.

yters 7y ago

That's been the general vibe the popular tech press has been spouting for awhile. That NNs are somehow a major step towards AGI, which'll 'capture the lightcone of the future' to quote Sam Altman. At some point, we'll realize that AGI is the modern alchemy. Ironically, alchemy's penultimate goal was to construct a homoculus, which is essentially the goal of AGI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Alchemy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homunculus#Alchemy "The allegorical text suggests to the reader that the ultimate goal of alchemy is not chrysopoeia, but it is instead the artificial generation of humans."

malux85 7y ago
> That's been the general vibe the popular tech press has been spouting for awhile This is such a vague generalisation, I cant do anything with it, except maybe how about "nullius in verba", on the word of noone, or "think for yourself"
criddell 7y ago
Penultimate means the second last thing in a set. In the alphabet, 'y' is the penultimate letter.
- yters 7y ago
  The last thing is 'profit'!
  - criddell 7y ago
    Ha! Makes sense then. :)

alanbernstein 7y ago

Your general point is valid, but I can't help pointing out that knitting may not belong in that second list as much as the others. Computational textile work is a niche, but fascinating, area of research. Knitting and crocheting are highly technical crafts, and there are opportunities to use modern computational approaches, including deep learning, in them. Deep Knitting: https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02752.pdf https://arxiv.org/pdf/1902.02752.pdf I'm not going to read this paper in detail, it may not be a great example of a successful deep learning application - but at least it's not an absurd idea. Maybe not surprising if you're aware of the place of the Jacquard loom in the history of computer science.