10 ms·
Peter Norvig Joins Stanford HAI
- sharmin123 5y agoThe Best And Easiest Ways To Protect Yourself From Hackers: https://www.hackerslist.co/the-best-and-easiest-ways-to-protect-yourself-from-hackers/ https://www.hackerslist.co/the-best-and-easiest-ways-to-prot...
- mark_l_watson 5y agoWonderful for the students who he will teach. Kind of off topic, but his positive attitude in this short interview towards training AI workers reminds me of the same positivism in parts of the new book AI 2041. I also like the focus on training practitioners. I am 70 years old, but I still look forward to work every morning as a deep learning engineer.
- pvaldes 5y agoHum, We talk about the same Peter Norvig that is an expert in cetaceans?
- metagame 5y agoFor anyone not in the loop, Norvig was the author of Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming. This was a substantial contribution to the field of educational computer science literature, and helped to kickstart the idea that the way to learn is to read, not just write. It's also one of the few AI books that isn't rooted squarely in Algol. It's written with fairly decent though not always portable Common Lisp, just like most Common Lisp books of the era. It can be read here, in mobi or zipped HTML format: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/releases/tag/1.1 https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/releases/tag/1.1 Or here, in PDF: https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/releases/tag/v1.0 https://github.com/norvig/paip-lisp/releases/tag/v1.0 For a native web copy, abuse Safari Online's free trial. It's what I assume everyone else does when they want to read a niche technical book that O'Reilly put out but doesn't print another run of. Depending on the day, the book ranges anywhere from $2 to $60 on Amazon, used, if you want a hard copy. (Edited to fix the very butchered title that I wrote in error initially.)
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- joshuamorton 5y agoAlso one of the two authors of Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach, which is probably the most commonly used intro AI textbook.
- metagame 5y agoI would have mentioned that, but it's mentioned in the Stanford post and is also less interesting from a "You Should Know" standpoint on a website built on a Common Lisp-inspired Lisp. Not to mention that the book isn't as good as PAIP.
- avmich 5y ago> Not to mention that the book isn't as good as PAIP. Norvig would disagree - http://www.norvig.com/Lisp-retro.html http://www.norvig.com/Lisp-retro.html - ----- As an AI text, PAIP does not fare as well. It never attempted to be a comprehensive AI text, stressing the "Paradigms" or "Classics" of the field rather than the most current programs and theories. Happily, the classics are beginning to look obsolete now (the field would be in sorry shape if that didn't happen eventually). For a more modern approach to AI, forget PAIP and look at Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach. ----- But I would highly recommend reading PAIP. I felt that some important examples of classic AI (like SHRDLU, not to mention Eurisko) could be included, but it's still really good.
- metagame 5y agoI'm aware of what he said on it, and I don't disagree with what he said, but you're misrepresenting him by leaving the preceding two lines out. «As an advanced Lisp text, PAIP stands up very well. There are still very few other places to get a thorough treatment of efficiency issues, Lisp design issues, and uses of macros and compilers. (For macros, Paul Graham's books have done an especially excellent job.) As an AI programming text, PAIP does well. The only real competing text to emerge recently is Forbus and de Kleer, and they have a more limited (and thus more focused and integrated) approach, concentrating on inference systems. (The Charniak, Riesbeck, and McDermott book is also still worth looking at.) One change over the last six years is that AI programming has begun to look more like "regular" programming, because (a) AI programs, like "regular" programs, are increasingly concerned with large data bases, and (b) "regular" programmers have begun to address things such as searching the internet and recognizing handwriting and speech. An AI programming text today would have to cover data base interfaces, http and other network protocols, threading, graphical interfaces, and other issues.» While yes, it aged poorly as an AI text, and excellently as a Lisp & AI programming text, it's a better book than AI:AMA, even if ignoring that it's based around a better language.
- justicezyx 5y agoI suspect Peter should have left Google long ago. Google's approach to ML/AI probably is not what Peter really liked, judging from his past writings and books. There is certainly a strong sense of symbolic and rule-based intelligence, based on my limited reading and even more limited understanding. But I guess Google paid very well... In reality, Google probably should sponsor Peter and let him work at Stanford...
- nl 5y agoGiven that Norvig was one of the authors of "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Data"[1] and his famous statistical spell checker[2] are both about showing how rule and symbolic intelligence doesn't work I don't think your thesis is quite correct. [1] https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.com/en//pubs/archive/35179.pdf https://static.googleusercontent.com/media/research.google.c... [2] https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html https://norvig.com/spell-correct.html
- vl 5y agoWhen I was at Google I never heard Norvig’s name in connection with anything. At any internal AI conferences Jeff Dean would be present, Kurzweil, etc., but never Norvig.
- nothrowaways 5y agoRule based and all was long ago before data was so much abundant. Or in other words before big data era.
- jamestimmins 5y agoHe created one of the first courses on Udacity, Design of Computer Programs. It's free and quite good, from what I hear. https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--cs212 https://www.udacity.com/course/design-of-computer-programs--...
- donkey-hotei 5y agoYes. Very good, & also challenging :) Highly recommend
- nick0garvey 5y agoAgreed, this class was a masterpiece. Changed the way I write software
- alphabetting 5y agoBig get for Stanford
- thuccess129 5y agoThe Pentagon software developers with a Kindergarten grade education in Ai can route through Stanford as part of their professional development and climb the career ladder.
- brchr 5y agoCurrent title ("Peter Norvig Leaves Google to Join Stanford HAI") seems to overstate slightly. According to Peter: "I still have my affiliation with Google, but will spend most of my time at Stanford."
- justicezyx 5y agoWow, the title is so wrong...
- lsb 5y agoDo you have a link?
- dang 5y agoOk, we've taken 'leaves' out of the title.
- sjg007 5y agoMade a few million and can afford to be a professor again. :). Academic life is the best life.
- user3939382 5y agoWhile we're on the topic, one of my favorite blog posts of all time is his "Teach Yourself Programming in Ten Years" https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html https://www.norvig.com/21-days.html
- nekopa 5y agoIt's funny you mention this, as there is a big thread above that discusses his contribution to learning by reading, and his second point here is "Program. The best type of learning is learning by doing".
- crazy5sheep 5y agoSame here, I was inspired a lot by this post all these years. I really want to take this chance to say than you to Peter.
- ineedasername 5y agoin Ten Years That sounds about right. Whenever I have to revisit code I wrote more than 3+ years ago I tend to think "Why the hell did I do it that way?" Occasionally, now knowing the trend, I'll even comment in an apology to my future self. When I encounter those past comments my general sentiment is something like "yeah, thanks for the spaghetti asshole, would half a day to clean this up have really been so hard?" And sometimes I remember the circumstances of that spaghetti, boiled around 2:00 AM, and remember "nope, wasn't time". Even though now I can do it better and faster.
- didip 5y agoWhat did Norvig do at Google, anyone knows?
- m0zg 5y agoProbably the same thing such folks do elsewhere: allowed some very smart people to not step on the rakes quite as often, and be even smarter by providing perspective and advice.
- norvig 5y agoI ran Search for 5 years or so; then ran all of Research for the next 5; then had an increasing smaller portion of a huge growing Research initiative. This past year I enjoyed mentoring startups in ML through the Google for Startups program. But m0gz got it pretty much right.
- lostmsu 5y agoSorry for a snarky comment, but doesn't that cover the time when HN started noticing, that search stopped returning results for the query that was requested, and instead started to be "too clever" about it with no way to override?
- nostrademons 5y agoThe time period he's talking about is 2001-2006. HN didn't even exist then. That was when Google was basically like magic and let you find stuff you never knew existed. HN started complaining about Google being too spammy around 2008, and then about results getting too clever around 2012 or so.
- lostmsu 5y agoThis was not clear because one of the slices did not mention the span it lasted.
- nothrowaways 5y agoDid your job require you to code? How did you manage to keep sharp at coding?
- lkkjwokljfow391 5y agoCongratulations Peter! I was first introduced to Mr. Norvig when taking a MOOC course (Intro to AI). There I witnessed his approach to problem solving and his clever & elegant solutions. I couldn't help but be in awe.
- norvig 5y ago"Joins Stanford HAI" is correct; "Leaves Google" is not right–I'm keeping my Google badge, but will spend most of my time at Stanford.
- peter_retief 5y agoNice Peter.
- Alekhine 5y agoOne great reason to come to HN is that you can find a thread on any tech personality, and semi often they'll just show up in the comments.
- 9387367 5y ago> norvig.com is protected by Imunify360 > We have noticed an unusual activity from your IP and blocked access to this website.
- jcims 5y agoHey Dr Norvig, really enjoyed your podcast episode with Lex Fridman a couple of years ago. Once you get settled in it would be great to hear an update with how its going, some color around the background and objectives of the program and maybe just riff on the subject for a bit. Thanks!
- ZhangSWEFAANG 5y ago'One way to think of AI is as a process of optimization — finding the course of action, in an uncertain world, that will result in the maximum expected utility" This specifically reminds me of reinforcement learning. "Now that we have a great set of algorithms and tools, the more pressing questions are human-centered: Exactly what do you want to optimize? Whose interests are you serving? Are you being fair to everyone? Is anyone being left out? Is the data you collected inclusive, or is it biased?" This is like a meta-view of automation. When tasks were automated, people were able to do higher order thinking. For example, when people no longer had to do menial excel spreadsheets work, they were able to glean more meaningful insights from the data. "The next challenge is to reach people who lack self-confidence, who don’t see themselves as capable of learning new things and being successful, who think of the tech world as being for others, not them" This is the same insight Ajay Bangha (CEO of mastercard) made on giving financial access to the Next Billion Users.