5 ms·

Is there anything actually released here? Just a paper? No weights, not even code?! No interactive product of any kind? The degree of Google’s inability to actu

by frisco 3y ago

Is there anything actually released here? Just a paper? No weights, not even code?! No interactive product of any kind? The degree of Google’s inability to actually ship anything even now is totally mindblowing

light_hue_1 3y ago
That's Google. I don't bother to read most Google papers unless someone tells me that they're doing something astounding. Just because I know I don't have access to their models, their code or their data. So what's the point? As a community we need to stop accepting and stop citing papers like these. There is no science without replicability, and it is literally impossible to replicate this work. It's not worth the paper it's printed on. It's fine if Google wants to play with its toys at home. But we should stop pretending this is research of any value.
- gs17 3y ago
  I don't even bother with the "astounding" things unless there's code. MusicLM was cool, but without code/weights it might as well be a hoax.
  - fpgaminer 3y ago
    Yeah, these days I'm "over" Google's AI research. All their papers sound cool, and they've got nice pictures/audio/etc. But nothing meaningful has ever materialized from Google. OpenAI is killing it with ChatGPT, a publicly accessible product with research papers that have been reproduced. Facebook released huge LLMs for free. Stability released successful image models for free. etc. Meanwhile Google has ... Tensorflow? Dying. TPUs? Only used by Google themselves or when they're free. Bard? A joke compared to ChatGPT. Imagen? Never released. Remember when Google said they were going to have an AI call your hair salon and make appointments for you? Yeah... But hey, at least they've got that golden mountain of PII they harvested from everyone that's been oh so valuable in building new, market defining products... It's not like small companies are running circles around them using publicly available hardware and publicly available data... And they've still got search, a that product just keeps getting better and more useful by the day...
    - esafak 3y ago
      > Remember when Google said they were going to have an AI call your hair salon and make appointments for you? I think that ran into social problems, not technical ones. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538194/google-duplex-ai-restaurants-experiences-review-robocalls https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538194/google-duplex-ai-...
  - gremlinsinc 3y ago
    yeah they were supposed to have the next big image thing, OMG it can do text, and stable diffusion beat them to releasing something that actually can render text on images, so yeah - there's a lot of young companies iterating way faster than an old guard can muster up the troops and honestly I don't think anyone at Google feels inspired much these days, hard to build some passionate endeavors when your soul is being sucked right out of you.
- mirker 3y ago
  There is a ton of value. OpenAI having proprietary LLMs single handedly pivoted the entire field to LLMs. A random GitHub repository doesn’t come close to impact.
skybrian 3y ago
I wish people would stop with these shallow, boring dismissals. It's a research paper, not a product. While it's disappointing that they don't release more, it's good that they share their ideas.
- fpgaminer 3y ago
  A research paper by itself isn't worth nothing, sure, but without the ability to reproduce the paper or even check their results it's ... not worth much.
  - alsodumb 3y ago
    Researchers always have a lot to take away from Google papers that don’t release code or dataset - people understand that sometimes folks at companies sometimes cannot release the code or dataset. Doesn’t make any key contributions less meaningful - if that was the case, all conferences would have banned papers that don’t release code and dataset by now.
    - fpgaminer 3y ago
      Conferences _should_ ban papers that don't release code or other means of reliable reproduction. The only reason they don't is because "research" in ML has more or less been a joke compared to any other established scientific field. And I'm not going to give Google the benefit of the doubt. At the very least I'll treat them like any random stranger publishing a paper. But in reality I treat their papers with a heavy critical eye these days because more often than not their research has turned out to be bunk and unreproducible.
      - alsodumb 3y ago
        Funny you compare ML with other fields - in my experience ML is the most open and reproducible area of scientific research, by far. Talk to researchers in other areas, many write “dataset and code available by request” but never share it, have custom CFS solvers and write papers with it but never release the code, and do experiments and leave out all details in the paper making it impossible to reproduce. You are free to treat a paper from Google like a paper from any random stranger, sure. But it doesn’t change the fact that many ML researchers I know in my R1 University (and many other top universities) always mention how much insights they get from these papers even when they couldn’t always release the code/models.
dragonwriter 3y ago
> Just a paper? Yes, its describing an architecture. > No interactive product of any kind? The degree of Google’s inability to actually ship anything even now is totally mindblowing. Yes, Google is comically bad at shipping AI products (mostly, from their description, for “safety” reasons). OTOH, they are very good at putting out papers that other people turn into products, so this kind of thing isn’t without value.
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
nl 3y ago
This is absolutly wrong. Google (and other large industry labs) have the budget and resources to experiment. They should be encouraged and thanked for publishing what works. It's not super hard to reimplement a published paper. But running multiple experiments is hard for individuals or smaller companies.
- SanderNL 3y ago
  > thanked for publishing what they and they alone claim works. Fixed.
  - nl 3y ago
    I'm not aware of any cases where this isn't the case and I personally have implemented a number of their papers. Are you aware of other cases?
throwaway29303 3y ago
You should read this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35824408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35824408

by frisco 3y ago

light_hue_1 3y ago

That's Google. I don't bother to read most Google papers unless someone tells me that they're doing something astounding. Just because I know I don't have access to their models, their code or their data. So what's the point? As a community we need to stop accepting and stop citing papers like these. There is no science without replicability, and it is literally impossible to replicate this work. It's not worth the paper it's printed on. It's fine if Google wants to play with its toys at home. But we should stop pretending this is research of any value.

gs17 3y ago
I don't even bother with the "astounding" things unless there's code. MusicLM was cool, but without code/weights it might as well be a hoax.
- fpgaminer 3y ago
  Yeah, these days I'm "over" Google's AI research. All their papers sound cool, and they've got nice pictures/audio/etc. But nothing meaningful has ever materialized from Google. OpenAI is killing it with ChatGPT, a publicly accessible product with research papers that have been reproduced. Facebook released huge LLMs for free. Stability released successful image models for free. etc. Meanwhile Google has ... Tensorflow? Dying. TPUs? Only used by Google themselves or when they're free. Bard? A joke compared to ChatGPT. Imagen? Never released. Remember when Google said they were going to have an AI call your hair salon and make appointments for you? Yeah... But hey, at least they've got that golden mountain of PII they harvested from everyone that's been oh so valuable in building new, market defining products... It's not like small companies are running circles around them using publicly available hardware and publicly available data... And they've still got search, a that product just keeps getting better and more useful by the day...
  - esafak 3y ago
    > Remember when Google said they were going to have an AI call your hair salon and make appointments for you? I think that ran into social problems, not technical ones. https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538194/google-duplex-ai-restaurants-experiences-review-robocalls https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/9/18538194/google-duplex-ai-...
- gremlinsinc 3y ago
  yeah they were supposed to have the next big image thing, OMG it can do text, and stable diffusion beat them to releasing something that actually can render text on images, so yeah - there's a lot of young companies iterating way faster than an old guard can muster up the troops and honestly I don't think anyone at Google feels inspired much these days, hard to build some passionate endeavors when your soul is being sucked right out of you.
mirker 3y ago
There is a ton of value. OpenAI having proprietary LLMs single handedly pivoted the entire field to LLMs. A random GitHub repository doesn’t come close to impact.

skybrian 3y ago

I wish people would stop with these shallow, boring dismissals. It's a research paper, not a product. While it's disappointing that they don't release more, it's good that they share their ideas.

fpgaminer 3y ago
A research paper by itself isn't worth nothing, sure, but without the ability to reproduce the paper or even check their results it's ... not worth much.
- alsodumb 3y ago
  Researchers always have a lot to take away from Google papers that don’t release code or dataset - people understand that sometimes folks at companies sometimes cannot release the code or dataset. Doesn’t make any key contributions less meaningful - if that was the case, all conferences would have banned papers that don’t release code and dataset by now.
  - fpgaminer 3y ago
    Conferences _should_ ban papers that don't release code or other means of reliable reproduction. The only reason they don't is because "research" in ML has more or less been a joke compared to any other established scientific field. And I'm not going to give Google the benefit of the doubt. At the very least I'll treat them like any random stranger publishing a paper. But in reality I treat their papers with a heavy critical eye these days because more often than not their research has turned out to be bunk and unreproducible.
    - alsodumb 3y ago
      Funny you compare ML with other fields - in my experience ML is the most open and reproducible area of scientific research, by far. Talk to researchers in other areas, many write “dataset and code available by request” but never share it, have custom CFS solvers and write papers with it but never release the code, and do experiments and leave out all details in the paper making it impossible to reproduce. You are free to treat a paper from Google like a paper from any random stranger, sure. But it doesn’t change the fact that many ML researchers I know in my R1 University (and many other top universities) always mention how much insights they get from these papers even when they couldn’t always release the code/models.

dragonwriter 3y ago

> Just a paper? Yes, its describing an architecture. > No interactive product of any kind? The degree of Google’s inability to actually ship anything even now is totally mindblowing. Yes, Google is comically bad at shipping AI products (mostly, from their description, for “safety” reasons). OTOH, they are very good at putting out papers that other people turn into products, so this kind of thing isn’t without value.

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

nl 3y ago

This is absolutly wrong. Google (and other large industry labs) have the budget and resources to experiment. They should be encouraged and thanked for publishing what works. It's not super hard to reimplement a published paper. But running multiple experiments is hard for individuals or smaller companies.

SanderNL 3y ago
> thanked for publishing what they and they alone claim works. Fixed.
- nl 3y ago
  I'm not aware of any cases where this isn't the case and I personally have implemented a number of their papers. Are you aware of other cases?

throwaway29303 3y ago

You should read this https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35824408 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35824408