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> While I’m interested in machine learning, I’m not convinced that today’s AI is anywhere near as profound as electricity or fire This seems a not too uncommon

> While I’m interested in machine learning, I’m not convinced that today’s AI is anywhere near as profound as electricity or fire This seems a not too uncommon experience among CS people where machine learning loses its interest once they understand the magic

jimbokun 6y ago
Once you have a handle on the deep learning tools, it seems like it’s more like configuration and less like programming.
iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago
I'm a big ML proponent, both because of work and personal interest. Saying it is like electricity is idiotic, and only makes false expectations about ML worse. But I would not say that makes it uninteresting. Nor does it make it irrelevant from a business perspective. There are still lots of beneficial ways to use ML, and lots of different angles from which to derive intellectual satisfaction. I suppose if someone went into the field expecting I Robot type stuff, they might be disappointed, but it's hard to imagine someone with a CS background having such unrealistic expectations of what ML actually is.
nkozyra 6y ago
> This seems a not too uncommon experience among CS people where machine learning loses its interest once they understand the magic Maybe. I went into my program with no preconceived ideas that there was 'magic' happening here. What I got out of it was a real curiosity about how humans think and how that may not be a magical as we think either. Long-term I cannot see AI being anything but the paradigm-smashing artifact it's sold as. But progress is (relatively) slow on a human scale, so we find incremental progress ultimately lackluster. If you take it through that lens it becomes more reasonable and you find yourself less skeptical that, just as we have no flying cars, we have no AGI or that all work has been replaced.
jonas21 6y ago
In 1850, few people felt that electricity was particularly profound either. That year, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Michael Faraday why electricity was valuable. Faraday replied, "One day sir, you may tax it." [1]. The electric motor had been invented (by Faraday), but it couldn't do any useful work and had to sit in a pool of mercury to function. Electric lighting had been invented, but the filaments were dim and burned out too quickly to be practical. There was no way to generate or distribute electricity at scale. To most people, electricity looked like a toy (and a terrifying toy at that). It would take decades of invention and refinement to get to the point where electricity was useful, reliable, and ubiquitous. But the seeds for doing so were there in 1850. So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perceptio...
- ISL 6y ago
  There are almost seven times as many people alive today as there were in 1850 -- we may be in 1850, but the number of clever people driving advances is substantially larger.
  - nine_k 6y ago
    They are also spread over a substantially larger spectrum of scientific disciplines. There was no ML in 1850, and the word "tensor" was invented in 1846. No biochemistry, no genetics, no quantum mechanics.
- godelski 6y ago
  Just be aware that you're using selection bias to substantiate your point here. There were many more claims along the same lines that didn't pan out as well and didn't turn out as well. I even say this as someone who believes AI/ML will change the world (though I'm with MJ on this one).
- onion2k 6y ago
  So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. You can make a claim that "This might be revolutionary! It's just too early to tell." about literally anything.

jimbokun 6y ago

Once you have a handle on the deep learning tools, it seems like it’s more like configuration and less like programming.

iujjkfjdkkdkf 6y ago

I'm a big ML proponent, both because of work and personal interest. Saying it is like electricity is idiotic, and only makes false expectations about ML worse. But I would not say that makes it uninteresting. Nor does it make it irrelevant from a business perspective. There are still lots of beneficial ways to use ML, and lots of different angles from which to derive intellectual satisfaction. I suppose if someone went into the field expecting I Robot type stuff, they might be disappointed, but it's hard to imagine someone with a CS background having such unrealistic expectations of what ML actually is.

nkozyra 6y ago

> This seems a not too uncommon experience among CS people where machine learning loses its interest once they understand the magic Maybe. I went into my program with no preconceived ideas that there was 'magic' happening here. What I got out of it was a real curiosity about how humans think and how that may not be a magical as we think either. Long-term I cannot see AI being anything but the paradigm-smashing artifact it's sold as. But progress is (relatively) slow on a human scale, so we find incremental progress ultimately lackluster. If you take it through that lens it becomes more reasonable and you find yourself less skeptical that, just as we have no flying cars, we have no AGI or that all work has been replaced.

jonas21 6y ago

In 1850, few people felt that electricity was particularly profound either. That year, William Gladstone, Chancellor of the Exchequer, asked Michael Faraday why electricity was valuable. Faraday replied, "One day sir, you may tax it." [1]. The electric motor had been invented (by Faraday), but it couldn't do any useful work and had to sit in a pool of mercury to function. Electric lighting had been invented, but the filaments were dim and burned out too quickly to be practical. There was no way to generate or distribute electricity at scale. To most people, electricity looked like a toy (and a terrifying toy at that). It would take decades of invention and refinement to get to the point where electricity was useful, reliable, and ubiquitous. But the seeds for doing so were there in 1850. So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perception https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electricity#Cultural_perceptio...

ISL 6y ago
There are almost seven times as many people alive today as there were in 1850 -- we may be in 1850, but the number of clever people driving advances is substantially larger.
- nine_k 6y ago
  They are also spread over a substantially larger spectrum of scientific disciplines. There was no ML in 1850, and the word "tensor" was invented in 1846. No biochemistry, no genetics, no quantum mechanics.
godelski 6y ago
Just be aware that you're using selection bias to substantiate your point here. There were many more claims along the same lines that didn't pan out as well and didn't turn out as well. I even say this as someone who believes AI/ML will change the world (though I'm with MJ on this one).
onion2k 6y ago
So when Sundar Pichai says AI is more profound than electricity, it's possible he's right. It's just that we're still in its 1850, so we can't see it yet. You can make a claim that "This might be revolutionary! It's just too early to tell." about literally anything.