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I find these kind of articles just perplexing. Research is incremental, tiny steps pushing the boundaries of knowledge. DeepMind has done things that were tho

by dannyz 5y ago

I find these kind of articles just perplexing. Research is incremental, tiny steps pushing the boundaries of knowledge. DeepMind has done things that were thought to be decades away using deep reinforcement learning. These research advancements may or may not end up being important for AGI in the future, but that's just what research is.

freeone3000 5y ago
It's refuting the premise that supervised RL becomes less supervised because you put the feedback in a handcrafted function and use a neural network. Deep RL in its current state should be grouped with Supervised RL, in other words (which is why I personally think that imitation learning is a great way forward, in contrast with the author). The issue is the amount of interactive tweaking and lack of a natural reward function that prevents DeepRL from being unsupervised.
- rich_sasha 5y ago
  AlphaZero is not supervised, in the sense that it learned from known correct actions (earlier versions of AlphGo did learn from online games). So although it needed human supervision, sure, it didn’t need us to provide correct answers. The authors point does somewhat stand that you don’t have the problem of reward engineering in board games so they are a dead end from that point of view - they skirt around the core problem instead of tackling it.
  - freeone3000 5y ago
    AlphaZero only works on video games. If you remove its ability to judge progress by game score, which is a reward function (though not the one used, due to delayed reward issues), then it's not capable of finding its feedback. It only works in constructed environments where the environment provides the reward function implicitly. Maybe we can video-game-ify laundry folding sufficiently? I'm doubtful.
shadowlight 5y ago
I don't agree with this article but it is not perplexing at all. Dead ends exist. The universe is highly, highly limited and everything eventually has a dead end. The question is, are we there yet? For certain things yes, for other things no. But to assume there is never a dead end and that everything can be overcome through incremental development and research is patently a false assumption. There are many examples of dead ends within research and development. Thus in short his proposal is likely wrong, but it is not a perplexing proposal. Nor is his proposal guaranteed to be wrong and there is a possibility he may be right. For example Elon predicted self driving will be a finished problem in a year. Guess what? I actually sort of dislike this whole "perplexing" attitude that some people have. It's like yeah his opinion seems wrong or his opinion is not the norm, but there's no need to treat it as if it's "perplexing." It's like you observing animal behavior in a lab and your so "perplexed" on how someone can have a differing opinion. People can have differing opinions and sometimes these opinions can be right and overturn an existing paradigm. Instead of saying you find someone perplexing or strange, just say you disagree. It's more civil and it respects the underdogs of the past who fought against overwhelming odds to change entire schools of thought and bring our knowledge closer to answering the ultimate question. So perplexing how some people are so rude nowadays. See what I did there?
- shadowlight 5y ago
  I actually find this technique used a lot on HN. They disagree with someone but they want to insult them without violating HN rules so they treat the person as if they're some kind of lab experiment and observing how they're behavior is so "strange" or "perplexing". The admins likely fail to see just how insulting these kinds of comments are. Perplexing is when someone jumps off a cliff while detonating a stick of dynamite. Someone with a differing opinion is NOT perplexing. "I find it so perplexing that someone would think that... despite that... " and so on. Really people should call it out. It's rude and manipulative.
  - inglor_cz 5y ago
    Thank you for formulating precisely what I felt, but could not describe in detail. Calling someone else's opinion basically outside any rational Overton window is usually meant as a veiled insult.
pdimitar 5y ago
Nothing perplexing about it, there have been a multitude of grandiose promises by the AI area and I think people are just getting tired of it so they might expect more radical results at the current point of time. Research is indeed incremental and revolutions only happen after critical mass has been accumulated in one or more areas, leading to a breakthrough that wasn't possible before. Sure. And since that's true, let's just temper the expectations of the wider public. Investors and governments might need the grandiose claims in order for the area to receive money but everybody else needs a balanced and objective take on the question "Where is the area right now?" If it can't fold laundry, or cook by physically picking stuff up from the fridge, well, let's just say it out loud and be done with it. That way nobody will be perplexed. :P

by dannyz 5y ago

freeone3000 5y ago

It's refuting the premise that supervised RL becomes less supervised because you put the feedback in a handcrafted function and use a neural network. Deep RL in its current state should be grouped with Supervised RL, in other words (which is why I personally think that imitation learning is a great way forward, in contrast with the author). The issue is the amount of interactive tweaking and lack of a natural reward function that prevents DeepRL from being unsupervised.

rich_sasha 5y ago
AlphaZero is not supervised, in the sense that it learned from known correct actions (earlier versions of AlphGo did learn from online games). So although it needed human supervision, sure, it didn’t need us to provide correct answers. The authors point does somewhat stand that you don’t have the problem of reward engineering in board games so they are a dead end from that point of view - they skirt around the core problem instead of tackling it.
- freeone3000 5y ago
  AlphaZero only works on video games. If you remove its ability to judge progress by game score, which is a reward function (though not the one used, due to delayed reward issues), then it's not capable of finding its feedback. It only works in constructed environments where the environment provides the reward function implicitly. Maybe we can video-game-ify laundry folding sufficiently? I'm doubtful.

shadowlight 5y ago

I don't agree with this article but it is not perplexing at all. Dead ends exist. The universe is highly, highly limited and everything eventually has a dead end. The question is, are we there yet? For certain things yes, for other things no. But to assume there is never a dead end and that everything can be overcome through incremental development and research is patently a false assumption. There are many examples of dead ends within research and development. Thus in short his proposal is likely wrong, but it is not a perplexing proposal. Nor is his proposal guaranteed to be wrong and there is a possibility he may be right. For example Elon predicted self driving will be a finished problem in a year. Guess what? I actually sort of dislike this whole "perplexing" attitude that some people have. It's like yeah his opinion seems wrong or his opinion is not the norm, but there's no need to treat it as if it's "perplexing." It's like you observing animal behavior in a lab and your so "perplexed" on how someone can have a differing opinion. People can have differing opinions and sometimes these opinions can be right and overturn an existing paradigm. Instead of saying you find someone perplexing or strange, just say you disagree. It's more civil and it respects the underdogs of the past who fought against overwhelming odds to change entire schools of thought and bring our knowledge closer to answering the ultimate question. So perplexing how some people are so rude nowadays. See what I did there?

shadowlight 5y ago
I actually find this technique used a lot on HN. They disagree with someone but they want to insult them without violating HN rules so they treat the person as if they're some kind of lab experiment and observing how they're behavior is so "strange" or "perplexing". The admins likely fail to see just how insulting these kinds of comments are. Perplexing is when someone jumps off a cliff while detonating a stick of dynamite. Someone with a differing opinion is NOT perplexing. "I find it so perplexing that someone would think that... despite that... " and so on. Really people should call it out. It's rude and manipulative.
- inglor_cz 5y ago
  Thank you for formulating precisely what I felt, but could not describe in detail. Calling someone else's opinion basically outside any rational Overton window is usually meant as a veiled insult.

pdimitar 5y ago

Nothing perplexing about it, there have been a multitude of grandiose promises by the AI area and I think people are just getting tired of it so they might expect more radical results at the current point of time. Research is indeed incremental and revolutions only happen after critical mass has been accumulated in one or more areas, leading to a breakthrough that wasn't possible before. Sure. And since that's true, let's just temper the expectations of the wider public. Investors and governments might need the grandiose claims in order for the area to receive money but everybody else needs a balanced and objective take on the question "Where is the area right now?" If it can't fold laundry, or cook by physically picking stuff up from the fridge, well, let's just say it out loud and be done with it. That way nobody will be perplexed. :P