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One thing that DeepMind demonstrated was that sometimes one well funded team is much better than 50 poorly funded teams.
by hortense 5y ago
One thing that DeepMind demonstrated was that sometimes one well funded team is much better than 50 poorly funded teams.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- londons_explore 5y agoMost of deepminds additional funding goes into paying higher salaries. Those higher salaries don't result in better research results - but merely as a way to move the most prolific researchers from other institutions to them... Arguably this extra funding isn't leading to many new discoveries, but just shifting where discoveries are made.
- nerdponx 5y ago> Arguably this extra funding isn't leading to many new discoveries, but just shifting where discoveries are made. Concentrating all these prolific researchers in one place, removing the publish-or-perish incentive, and giving them access to unlimited data and computing power. Seems like that could make a difference.
- solveit 5y agoThe additional funding raises the market price of researchers. That nudges the market to produce more researchers. The marginal quant became an AI researcher because people respond to incentives[1]. This leads to more new discoveries[2]. [1] Standard caveats apply and the point stands. [2] Standard caveats apply and the point stands.
- londons_explore 5y agoOr that lots of compute power is more effective than decades of expertise in solving a problem...
- MattRix 5y agoIt’s quite naive to assume compute power is the main reason for deepmind’s success. Any bit of research into this (and most of their successes in other fields) will show otherwise.
- Diggsey 5y agoThe fact that they've succeeded in so many different fields implies that their success is due to a combination of compute power & expertise in harnessing that compute power, rather than expertise in all the different fields they have applied it to.
- civilized 5y agoWhat is the difference between "expertise in using computing power to advance a field" and "expertise in that field"
- joe_the_user 5y agoAny bit of research into this (and most of their successes in other fields) will show otherwise. Or you could supply references and/or an argument. The "if you researched this you'd agree with my claims" approach is pretty pernicious.
- MattRix 5y agoWhy is it my responsibility to provide references when the parent comment provided none? Everyone knows that Deepmind hires experts in deep learning, as well as subject matter experts. The idea that their success is just because of compute power alone is preposterous. Even the article that this comment thread is about has extensive speculation about the techniques Deepmind used. There’s clearly a high level of anticipation to read their paper.
- Gatsky 5y agoYes, this is the key takeaway. It is really a blow to academia that a private company could be so much better than them. It clearly demonstrates, to my mind, that academia is a poor engine for progress and getting worse. This is due to structural and sociological pathologies which there seems to be little appetite to mitigate. I say this as an academic, of course.
- Salgat 5y agoThe biggest issue with academia is their hyper focus on pumping out as many papers as cheaply and quickly as possible. Big ambitious projects are much less efficient at pulling this off.
- stevenbedrick 5y agoThe reason for that "hyper focus" is due to the "structural and sociological pathologies" that the grandparent posted about. Change the funding model and the rest will follow.
- jcfrei 5y agoIt always depends. In lots of fields it's just a fact that all the exciting research happens in private companies and then for others it's reversed. Private companies can do research well when a near or mid-term commercialization is possible. Otherwise it's up to the public institutions.
- an_opabinia 5y agoBut weren’t all those Google employees trained in the academy? Wasn’t this competition organized and designed by people in the academy? Who defined the goal, who laid not just the foundation but built the whole town? It’s clearly a positive collaboration. In any case, left to their own devices, corporate R&D teams wouldn’t be able to define goals that work for their business. Like without the competition and goals being defined for them, DeepMind would be having meetings with brand managers about the avant- grade of ad tracking.
- 5y ago
- nopasswrdmngr 5y agowell sometimes it is, sometimes it isn't. The question is what are the odds. I don't think Deepmind has the answer to this question.