4 ms·

I love democracy, but somehow there is something cloying about the use of "democratize" in this context.

ipsum2 6y ago
For some strange reason, everyone in the ML community refers to 'increasing adoption' as 'democratizing'. It's my pet peeve.
- minimaxir 6y ago
  "Democratizing" makes more sense when the industry evolved from AI/ML frameworks which required a Ph.D to use to allowing anyone to train a model (e.g. Theano -> TensorFlow -> Keras/fast.ai), and allowing people to train models on GPUs without a grant-funded supercomputer cluster, for very little cost (spot/preemptible cloud GPUs, Google Colab) In this case, I agree it's not equitable.
- jph00 6y ago
  There are two lead definitions for "democratize" in the Oxford English Dictionary. One of them is: "make (something) accessible to everyone" So the usage here is entirely consistent with standard English usage. It is also consistent with the French etymology (démocratiser), which has as a dictionary definition "Rendre démocratique, populaire" (i.e. to make popular).
  - kubanczyk 6y ago
    I think that definition is a part of parent's pet peeve. dēmo- (people) -kratía (rule) has only indirect relation to popularity.
  - justnotworthit 6y ago
    If I let everyone on my street borrow my bike, can I say "I've democratized my bike"?
    - andrekandre 6y ago
      i would say, only if they all get to vote on how/when its used and by whom
      - ben_w 6y ago
        While I am also irked by shifting meanings, I think trying to resist these changes is very Canute-like. https://cdn.digg.com/images/e160ad4bb9c845f894155145539af3df_7e33ab71a7b6497e862fff23bdaa9f2f_1_post.jpeg https://cdn.digg.com/images/e160ad4bb9c845f894155145539af3df...
    - nl 6y ago
      If you make lots of bikes available for rent then yes. https://medium.com/the-fourth-wave/the-great-democratization-of-transportation-7687fb3b579c https://medium.com/the-fourth-wave/the-great-democratization...
    - Fnoord 6y ago
      Did your bike get liberated from your dictatorship? I don't know. How good did it feel to eat Freedom Fries after 9/11?
  - ben_w 6y ago
    Thanks! I have also been confused by this use of “democratise”, so learning about the shift from “rule by the masses” to “accessible by the masses” is valuable.
- nvrspyx 6y ago
  I mean, increased adoption is a result of democratization (e.g. more accessible). I think the usage here is fine because Jupyter notebooks are definitely more accessible to those new to programming than a typical Python environment and this expands Jupyter to be used for more development purposes, like building libraries.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- hobofan 6y ago
  Increased adoption in ML comes with more open implementations and more freedom, which in contrast to FAANG being the only ones to employ advanced ML can indeed be seen as a form democratization.
- Asooka 6y ago
  Yeah, my first guess was that the tool allowed everybody to have an input on what best practices should look like and enable distributing the final consensus to everybody. So if today best practice is 4 space indent, this would be the default, but if enough people changed it to one tab, that would change everybody's default and reformat their code to conform with the new best practice.
- max_entropy 6y ago
  It implies that the state of ML research is undemocratic and therefore unfair or somehow opposing the values of our time. It's a ridiculous idea because with such an immense amount of quality information freely available, the only real barrier is intelligence. We can't democratize intelligence, so the sentiment smells a bit anti-meritocratic, rather than democratic (I think these two are often confused). It's really no different from saying that mathematics is undemocratic. Furthermore, it's patronizing to the wider audience by suggesting that they can participate in the field only after it's been brought down to their level of understanding (by the democratizing gatekeepers of course).
contravariant 6y ago
I'm still struggling to find the link with democracy. Sure you can't have democracy if the source code is inscrutable but that's a somewhat tenuous link. The word 'democratize' here doesn't seem to add any meaning that 'literate programming' doesn't already cover.
justnotworthit 6y ago
It suggests you've stolen fire from the gods (or the arcane halls of wizards/academics) and fed the starving masses. Pretty good for an ide.

For some strange reason, everyone in the ML community refers to 'increasing adoption' as 'democratizing'. It's my pet peeve.

minimaxir 6y ago
"Democratizing" makes more sense when the industry evolved from AI/ML frameworks which required a Ph.D to use to allowing anyone to train a model (e.g. Theano -> TensorFlow -> Keras/fast.ai), and allowing people to train models on GPUs without a grant-funded supercomputer cluster, for very little cost (spot/preemptible cloud GPUs, Google Colab) In this case, I agree it's not equitable.
jph00 6y ago
There are two lead definitions for "democratize" in the Oxford English Dictionary. One of them is: "make (something) accessible to everyone" So the usage here is entirely consistent with standard English usage. It is also consistent with the French etymology (démocratiser), which has as a dictionary definition "Rendre démocratique, populaire" (i.e. to make popular).
- kubanczyk 6y ago
  I think that definition is a part of parent's pet peeve. dēmo- (people) -kratía (rule) has only indirect relation to popularity.
- justnotworthit 6y ago
  If I let everyone on my street borrow my bike, can I say "I've democratized my bike"?
  - andrekandre 6y ago
    i would say, only if they all get to vote on how/when its used and by whom
    - ben_w 6y ago
      While I am also irked by shifting meanings, I think trying to resist these changes is very Canute-like. https://cdn.digg.com/images/e160ad4bb9c845f894155145539af3df_7e33ab71a7b6497e862fff23bdaa9f2f_1_post.jpeg https://cdn.digg.com/images/e160ad4bb9c845f894155145539af3df...
  - nl 6y ago
    If you make lots of bikes available for rent then yes. https://medium.com/the-fourth-wave/the-great-democratization-of-transportation-7687fb3b579c https://medium.com/the-fourth-wave/the-great-democratization...
  - Fnoord 6y ago
    Did your bike get liberated from your dictatorship? I don't know. How good did it feel to eat Freedom Fries after 9/11?
- ben_w 6y ago
  Thanks! I have also been confused by this use of “democratise”, so learning about the shift from “rule by the masses” to “accessible by the masses” is valuable.
nvrspyx 6y ago
I mean, increased adoption is a result of democratization (e.g. more accessible). I think the usage here is fine because Jupyter notebooks are definitely more accessible to those new to programming than a typical Python environment and this expands Jupyter to be used for more development purposes, like building libraries.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
hobofan 6y ago
Increased adoption in ML comes with more open implementations and more freedom, which in contrast to FAANG being the only ones to employ advanced ML can indeed be seen as a form democratization.
Asooka 6y ago
Yeah, my first guess was that the tool allowed everybody to have an input on what best practices should look like and enable distributing the final consensus to everybody. So if today best practice is 4 space indent, this would be the default, but if enough people changed it to one tab, that would change everybody's default and reformat their code to conform with the new best practice.
max_entropy 6y ago
It implies that the state of ML research is undemocratic and therefore unfair or somehow opposing the values of our time. It's a ridiculous idea because with such an immense amount of quality information freely available, the only real barrier is intelligence. We can't democratize intelligence, so the sentiment smells a bit anti-meritocratic, rather than democratic (I think these two are often confused). It's really no different from saying that mathematics is undemocratic. Furthermore, it's patronizing to the wider audience by suggesting that they can participate in the field only after it's been brought down to their level of understanding (by the democratizing gatekeepers of course).

contravariant 6y ago

I'm still struggling to find the link with democracy. Sure you can't have democracy if the source code is inscrutable but that's a somewhat tenuous link. The word 'democratize' here doesn't seem to add any meaning that 'literate programming' doesn't already cover.

justnotworthit 6y ago

It suggests you've stolen fire from the gods (or the arcane halls of wizards/academics) and fed the starving masses. Pretty good for an ide.