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For a change, maybe it'd be a good idea to get a CEO who at least has faint idea about how ML works on a technical level? Would you like a company that builds r
by loveparade 3y ago
For a change, maybe it'd be a good idea to get a CEO who at least has faint idea about how ML works on a technical level? Would you like a company that builds rockets to be led by some salesman who doesn't understand basic Physics? Probably not. You don't need to be Hinton or Schmidhuber, but come on, who thinks it's a good idea to have these typical "Silicon Valley VC CEOs" lead an AI company?
- threeseed 3y ago[flagged]
- loveparade 3y agoYou can hate Elon Musk as much as you want, but he absolutely knows a decent amount of Physics and Material Science. That's what he studied and has always wanted to do before PayPal. He even get into a Material Science PhD at Stanford. He drove a lot of the engineering at both Tesla and SpaceX. And without that, probably none of these companies would've worked out.
- kiidev 3y agoAnother of Musk’s lies that keeps being propagated “ In 1995, he was accepted to a PhD program in materials science at Stanford University.[64][65] However, Musk decided to join the Internet boom, dropping out two days after being accepted and applied for a job at Netscape” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk
- loveparade 3y agoMaybe read my comment again? There is no lie. I said accepted, not attended. And if you've ever tried to get into a PhD program at Stanford you'd know that isn't easy unless you have, you know, at least a little bit of knowledge of the field. So the parent claiming that Elon Musk doesn't even know basic Physics is blatantly wrong.
- kiidev 3y agoSorry I misread that as “got a Material Science phd”
- wonnage 3y agoGreat so now we're treating getting accepted to a PhD as though you actually completed one. Virtually every STEM graduate from colleges like Stanford is eligible for a graduate program somewhere, it's not that big of a deal
- xcv123 3y agoElon Musk has a degree in physics. So that addresses the original point. He knows basic physics.
- rain_iwakura 3y agohe never got into stanford. he made that up. there is no record of his admittance. and court records show that stanford dean (under oath) had to admit that they couldn't locate them. do you have source on "drove a lot of engineering" claim? even if you worked at one of these, could you prove the other?
- extheat 3y agoWhat is novel about driving engineering? It’s obvious he’s a highly involved CEO, and he actually understands and explains engineering decisions all the time. I hear all the time comments like “he doesn’t know anything about making rockets”. Tom Muller regularly has to comment on this noise. https://x.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929 https://x.com/lrocket/status/1512919230689148929
- adastra22 3y agoEric Berger’s book Liftoff details the early years of SpaceX based on interviews with the people involved. They all speak highly of Elon’s engineering expertise and the critical design decisions he made.
- vasco 3y agoI have no inside information, but a biographical book written with exclusive interviews to the person basically means it's a PR book. It maybe also has interesting and true things, but that's like justifying that he knows engineering because his mom said so.
- adastra22 3y agoEric Berger is a highly respected journalist. There was no editorial control from Elon/SpaceX.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- nearbuy 3y agoI think you got that backwards. There's a quote here[1] (sourced from court documents) from the director of admissions at Stanford that he was admitted: > Dear Elon, > As per special request from my colleagues in the School of Engineering, I have searched Stanford's admission data base and acknowledge that you applied and were admitted to the graduate program in Material Science Engineering in 1995. Since you did not enroll, Stanford is not able to issue you an official certification document. > Sincerely, Judith Haccou, Director [1] https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/54065/did-elon-musk-falsely-claim-to-have-a-degree-in-science https://skeptics.stackexchange.com/questions/54065/did-elon-...
- xcv123 3y agoElon Musk has a degree in physics.
- justrealist 3y agoWhat special credentials do you think Sam Altman had in AI?
- bmitc 3y agoI think the commenter you replied to was saying that Altman doesn't have special or any credentials for AI.
- astrange 3y agoThe trick is that execs do have unusually good insight into how their tech works, because they can ask their reports to explain it. Btw, I think it's funny how much credit Hinton gets for AI. His contribution is pretty much just keeping some grad students on the problem.
- loveparade 3y agoI think there's an important difference between not understanding and not doing the work yourself because you are in a managerial/advisor position. If you give Hinton a recent paper on LLM RLHF he will understand the nuances in it, he just delegates the actual work. If you give Emmett Shear or whoever such a thing, they almost certainly don't. For a deep tech company focused on research (not some consumer SaaS thing) I don't think you can be a good CEO if you don't even have an understanding of what you are building.
- magicalhippo 3y ago> His contribution is pretty much just keeping some grad students on the problem. I think the second best thing after having technical knowledge is to recognize smart employees and then not get in their way...
- astrange 3y agoIt's important but in tech world you'd get it as explicit "leadership" credit rather than a researcher, I think. Or maybe people would just call you a middle manager.
- ninjin 3y ago> I think it's funny how much credit Hinton gets for AI. His contribution is pretty much just keeping some grad students on the problem. Yes, clearly overrated in terms of credit. Doing foundational work in the field going back to the 70s which laid the groundwork and inspired the resurgence of neural networks in the late 80s. Being a solid community organiser throughout his career and keeping neural network research alive through the more formal statistical methods dominating for over a decade. Supervising and thus raising many others who themselves contributed greatly to the explosion of neural network utility we have seen since around 2010 until now. Should I carry on? I think it is absolutely clear that Hinton has contributed plenty enough to get a massive amount of credit for where we are today. The kind of mentality at display here is akin to ahistoricity on the level of saying that Gordon Moore "just started a company" after Apple released the M1 under the delusion that there is not a direct lineage between what we have today and breakthroughs and efforts in the past. Believe it or not, but we stand on the shoulders of giants and cutting them some slack is not the same as downplaying the impact of people more active in the present day; that are gradually becoming future giants.
- Kwpolska 3y agoThe CEO is so far removed from day-to-day operations that there's no benefit in them having an idea about the technical nitty gritty.
- mcv 3y agoThat varies wildly per company. And whether or not that's a good idea also varies. But if company exists specifically to develop a single specific technology, I think the CEO should know a thing or two about that technology. Especially when it's something so easily misunderstand as AI.
- huytersd 3y agoI think so. People don’t add value just by being technical. That’s a very low man on the totem pole perspective.
- ulfw 3y agoSo true. On the other end of the spectrum... I just got denied an interview with a company for an SVP Product (!) role because "they are looking for someone with hands on ML experience". Why you'd need that in a leadership role where you don't code anything (as a Product SVP) is beyond me, but hey. Anything AI related is just odd nowadays anyway.