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As a sensory scientist it's really frustrating to watch computer scientists appropriate our terminology and use it incorrectly.
by ttpphd 3y ago
As a sensory scientist it's really frustrating to watch computer scientists appropriate our terminology and use it incorrectly.
- dpflan 3y agoDo you mind highlighting the appropriated terminology and what would be better terms to use?
- tel 3y ago“Superposition” seems to be another term used for this. Although, it implies a mechanism instead of just a behavior.
- novaRom 3y agoIn modern Deep Learning , very few high-impact papers contain any scientifical theoretical explanation. It's more like trial and error, "we found A works and it improves B". Tech reports.
- _0ffh 3y agoIn a very old paper I once (>20 years ago) read the sentence "Machine learning research is mostly experimental math". There's always been the two kinds of ML research, the "experimental math" and the "understanding the math" kind, with a degree of overlap.
- cubefox 3y agoEver since machine learning became practically useful with OCR, the the experimentalists took over more and more. It's now mostly about what works instead of about proving theorems.
- petesergeant 3y agoMy father, a chartered civil engineer, was very upset when I got a Software Engineering degree
- amelius 3y agoI watched Transformers as a kid, and I'm equally frustrated.
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoIs this flippant remark an example of the kind of conversation that you want to find on the internet?
- amelius 3y agoWe're talking about names, terminology here. What deep conversations are you expecting to find, and can't they be intermingled with lighter remarks?
- YeGoblynQueenne 3y agoMaybe I'm over-reacting. My apologies. "Deep conversation"- I like how dang puts it: curious conversation.
- doctor_eval 3y agoI agree that a light sprinkle of humour can make a topic more approachable. That said, I keep thinking these posts are about electricity.
- esalman 3y agoElectrical engineer here, equally frustrated about convolution.
- sorenjan 3y agoWhat's wrong about using the term convolution in ML?
- krackers 3y agoIt's actually cross-correlation, not convolution? (The two are only equal if kernel is symmetric)
- esalman 3y agoYes. Convolution itself has a lot of very useful properties in signal processing (transformation between time and frequency domain for easier compute of LTI systems etc.) But those are lost from the ML literature.
- sorenjan 3y agoIt's just a matter of mirroring the kernel, and since the kernels are learned I don't really see the big deal. I guess the usage of the term convolution comes from image processing and other DSP where it used to be actual convolution, and now the operation is basically the same even if you might not even care about the actual values in each kernel.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoIMO it's worse: they aren't just subsuming the terminology. There's a strain of folks in tech that think that somehow AI researchers have actually uncovered how the brain works. The "neural net" started out as an analogy for a particular kind of statistical model. Now that analogy is being mistaken for some sort of fundamental truth. And if you suggest otherwise, it's the technologists who have it right, not the neuroscientists.
- CuriouslyC 3y agoThat's not a fair characterization. There are patterns that emerge in complexity given certain basic things hold true. It doesn't matter whether it's neurons or code, if the system has those property, it will also have those dynamics. This is a lot easier to understand in the abstract, whereas a neuroscientist might ask "why does the brain do XYZ" because they don't understand system dynamics.
- BaseballPhysics 3y agoI'd suggest paying closer attention to conversations about ChatGPT and purported sentience before claiming my comments are a mischaracterization. I can't count the number of times I've seen people argue that LLMs are proof that the human mind is just a statistical model. Meanwhile, any neuroscientists will be the first to tell you that we know surprisingly little about how neurons actually work together within the human brain, and certainly don't understand how consciousness emerges.
- mandmandam 3y agoSeconded. I even got called arrogant for very politely pointing out that this was wrong once, because the arguer had been in a computer science class, and so "knew what they were talking about". Neurons are complex. It's arrogant to think we fully understand them.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- zvolsky 3y agoYour frustration is understandable, but there is no fault on either side. Language evolves and different fields borrow and evolve the meanings of words all the time. Not even the `neuron` that you're thinking of is the original meaning of the word.
- robertsdionne 3y agoppl arguing about who owns which words
- two_in_one 3y agoYou don't want to even know what game developers call 'AI'.