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In the past, I have found Stephen Wolfram's air of superiority off-putting[a], but in this case I find myself nodding in agreement with every point he makes in
by cs702 4y ago
In the past, I have found Stephen Wolfram's air of superiority off-putting[a], but in this case I find myself nodding in agreement with every point he makes in the OP. I highly recommend you read it. This proposal, in particular, sounds like a great idea for improving ChatGPT in the near term:
> ...there’s the immediate opportunity of giving ChatGPT computational knowledge superpowers through Wolfram|Alpha. So it can not just produce “plausible human-like output”, but output that leverages the whole tower of computation and knowledge that’s encapsulated in Wolfram|Alpha and the Wolfram Language.
To anyone from OpenAI or Wolfram here: PLEASE DO THIS.
In many ways, what we're seeing is a modern-day rehash of the "classic AI"/"structured"/"symbolic" versus "deep learning"/"connectionist" approaches to AI, with people like Wolfram coming from the "classic AI"/"structured data"/"symbolic" tradition. For a good summary of both approaches from someone coming from the other tradition, read "The Bitter Lesson" by Rich Sutton: http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html http://incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html
There are AI researchers seeking to bridge the two approaches. Here's a recent example that seems significant to me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108047 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34108047 . See also this comment referencing Google's MuJoCo and LaMDA: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329847 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34329847 elsewhere on this page. Maybe we will eventually find that the two approaches are actually not different, as people like Marvin Minsky contended?
[a] In my experience, Wolfram makes even Jürgen Schmidhuber seem humble by comparison, always claiming to have done or thought about new things before everyone else. AI researchers may occasionally get 'Schmidhubered,' but everyone who claims anything significant in math/physics/AI sooner or later gets 'Wolframed.'
- kristiandupont 4y agoI agree that the prospects of combining the two is very appealing. I do hope that will happen in one way or another. As for Stephen Wolfram, maybe it's my predisposition but even in this article, I feel like I am sensing not just vanity but also a slight jealousy of ChatGPT's success.
- cs702 4y agoYes. I know what you mean about vanity/jealousy, but if you ignore his usual self-serving drivel -- e.g., offhand dismissive comments like "I've been tracking neural net technology for a long time (about 43 years, actually)" -- he makes good arguments, backed with examples, in the OP. Like everyone else, he deserves credit where and when it's due ;-)
- larve 4y agoI've just come to accept Stephen Wolfram's "air" of superiority to just that. If you parse it away as a vibe, he is a genuinely curious and invested person, that has stuck to their peculiar vision for more than 3 decades, and puts his money where his mouth is. Every design session of the wolfram language is streamed on youtube, which is pretty incredible to watch. I'm sad that the pricing / licensing makes wolfram products so hard if not impossible to shill in a professional setting, because I think it is a genuinely unique product in the sea of overall uninspired and mediocre takes on what computing could be. The wolfram conference is one of the most fun conferences I attend.
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