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Thank you for the thoughtful response. > The best technology winds up disappearing into the background and is unremarked-upon. Very much agree, but what I've

Thank you for the thoughtful response. > The best technology winds up disappearing into the background and is unremarked-upon. Very much agree, but what I've seen is that DL based solutions do not disappear into the background. It's so rare for them to disappear into the background that, sitting here at my computer right now, thinking real hard, I can't come up with a single consumer DL product that works reliably. I'm pretty sure there are a few things but it's soooo rare. Face ID works most of the time but the success rate for me is like 1 in 50. It's very very cool technology but it's also very unreliable. Also if face ID never existed I don't think my life would be worse off in any way. The same basic issue I can apply to ever DL solution I can think of. The best way I can describe it is they feel... janky. Always janky. I've had similar conversations before and, after some back and forth, the bullish-on-AI person ends up saying much of what you said. Here's where we end up in a weird stalemate... > I also wouldn't characterize "ability to automatically detect cardiac episodes and summon help" as some kind of marginal improvement! Maybe not a marginal improvement, but there's a lot of amazing technology in the medical, industrial, and military sectors. For example people are surprised that FLIR was actively used in the military in the early 90s! I have no doubt that DL is going to drive a lot of the innovation in highly specialized areas. What I'm talking about (and terrible at communicating, honestly) is general purpose consumer applications. Can DL significantly improve the lives of every day people? Right now I'm seeing a lot of toy applications, innovation in highly specialized areas, and only hopeful ambition for general use. What I'm waiting for is that magic moment when I use a technology that a) works flawlessly and b) changes how I live my life. As soon as I see a DL based solution that does that then I'm sold. I just haven't seen it yet.

m_ke 5y ago
Deep learning is narrowly applicable to every domain, that's the beauty of it. It's delivering 1.1-10x efficiency improvements for a lot of common workflows, which might not seem that impressive but really adds up. My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. I have a fairly affordable Hyundai that's able to drive 80 miles on a highway without me touching the steering wheel. I built an app that uses image recognition to automate food logging, from the surveys that we did it cut down the time to log from 15minutes a day to under 2. I've worked on systems to monitor patients at risk of falling in a hospital setting. My friend built Tonal, which can track your exercise form (https://www.tonal.com/ https://www.tonal.com/) Alphafold will be a huge deal for drug discovery. I can keep going
- 0xFACEFEED 5y ago
  > My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. Flawless sounds like an overstatement. I would hope that you use a professional before signing contract? That's serious stuff. > I have a fairly affordable Hyundai that's able to drive 80 miles on a highway without me touching the steering wheel. Are you referring to lane assist or OpenPilot? In both cases you need to be focused enough on the road that (IMO at least) it doesn't make that big of a difference either way. Certainly not life changing. > I built an app that uses image recognition to automate food logging, from the surveys that we did it cut down the time to log from 15minutes a day to under 2. Can it detect hot dogs? > I've worked on systems to monitor patients at risk of falling in a hospital setting. See my response wrt specialized (medical, industrial, military) settings. There's a lot of other incredible technology at work in hospitals. > My friend built Tonal, which can track your exercise form People exercised just fine before this. I'd classify Tonal as a marginal improvement, at best. I've actually found that removing technology and falling back to simple calisthenics (done properly of course) is having a much greater impact than adding more technology, for various reasons. > Alphafold will be a huge deal for drug discovery. I agree, but it falls under the category of specialized use cases. It's very exciting though.
  - m_ke 5y ago
    You could make the same arguments about computers or the internet.
- Jensson 5y ago
  > My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. You do realize that todays translation services often reverses the meaning of sentences? They are useful for reading random posts where you don't care about the results, but they should never be used when you absolutely need to know the meaning of statements. What you did is akin to putting your sleeping friend into a tesla, turn on the autopilot and see the teslan leave on the road, then posting "See, the tesla drove away perfectly, AI really automated driving!". You don't even know if it arrived safely, and even if it did the tech isn't reliable enough to safely do what you did.

m_ke 5y ago

Deep learning is narrowly applicable to every domain, that's the beauty of it. It's delivering 1.1-10x efficiency improvements for a lot of common workflows, which might not seem that impressive but really adds up. My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. I have a fairly affordable Hyundai that's able to drive 80 miles on a highway without me touching the steering wheel. I built an app that uses image recognition to automate food logging, from the surveys that we did it cut down the time to log from 15minutes a day to under 2. I've worked on systems to monitor patients at risk of falling in a hospital setting. My friend built Tonal, which can track your exercise form (https://www.tonal.com/ https://www.tonal.com/) Alphafold will be a huge deal for drug discovery. I can keep going

0xFACEFEED 5y ago
> My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. Flawless sounds like an overstatement. I would hope that you use a professional before signing contract? That's serious stuff. > I have a fairly affordable Hyundai that's able to drive 80 miles on a highway without me touching the steering wheel. Are you referring to lane assist or OpenPilot? In both cases you need to be focused enough on the road that (IMO at least) it doesn't make that big of a difference either way. Certainly not life changing. > I built an app that uses image recognition to automate food logging, from the surveys that we did it cut down the time to log from 15minutes a day to under 2. Can it detect hot dogs? > I've worked on systems to monitor patients at risk of falling in a hospital setting. See my response wrt specialized (medical, industrial, military) settings. There's a lot of other incredible technology at work in hospitals. > My friend built Tonal, which can track your exercise form People exercised just fine before this. I'd classify Tonal as a marginal improvement, at best. I've actually found that removing technology and falling back to simple calisthenics (done properly of course) is having a much greater impact than adding more technology, for various reasons. > Alphafold will be a huge deal for drug discovery. I agree, but it falls under the category of specialized use cases. It's very exciting though.
- m_ke 5y ago
  You could make the same arguments about computers or the internet.
Jensson 5y ago
> My cousin is an MMA fighter in another country, just today he got a contract from an american agent and asked me to translate it. I was able to throw it into google translate and in under 2 seconds it produced a flawless translation of 20 pages of legalese. You do realize that todays translation services often reverses the meaning of sentences? They are useful for reading random posts where you don't care about the results, but they should never be used when you absolutely need to know the meaning of statements. What you did is akin to putting your sleeping friend into a tesla, turn on the autopilot and see the teslan leave on the road, then posting "See, the tesla drove away perfectly, AI really automated driving!". You don't even know if it arrived safely, and even if it did the tech isn't reliable enough to safely do what you did.