4 ms·

Aravind Narayanan seems to be the only guy qualified enough to be called an expert.

by rishi_rt 1y ago

dang 1y ago
HN's own https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=randomwalker https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=randomwalker!
- randomwalker 1y ago
  Thanks! HN was part of the origin story of the book in question. In 2018 or 2019 I saw a comment here that said that most people don't appreciate the distinction between domains with low irreducible error that benefit from fancy models with complex decision boundaries (like computer vision) and domains with high irreducible error where such models don't add much value over something simple like logistic regression. It's an obvious-in-retrospect observation, but it made me realize that this is the source of a lot of confusion and hype about AI (such as the idea that we can use it to predict crime accurately). I gave a talk elaborating on this point, which went viral, and then led to the book with my coauthor Sayash Kapoor. More surprisingly, despite being seemingly obvious it led to a productive research agenda. While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it.
  - CamperBob2 1y ago
    It's hard to miss the similarity between your book's title and Cliff Stoll's 1995 Silicon Snake Oil, an indictment of the general concept of the "information superhighway" that was starting to resonate with the public. Stoll is a really smart guy, but that particular book hasn't held up too well: Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. (excerpted from the Amazon summary at https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information/dp/0385419937 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Informatio... ). So, was this something that you guys were conscious of when you chose your own book's title? How well have you future-proofed your central thesis?
    - randomwalker 1y ago
      Yes, we're aware! Fortunately our book is not a broad indictment of AI :) And none of our claims are premised on tasks people can do remaining out of reach for AI. More here: https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writing https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writi... Our more recent essay (and ongoing book project) "AI as Normal Technology" is about our vision of AI impacts over a longer timescale than "AI Snake Oil" looks at https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology I would categorize our views as techno-optimist, but people understand that term in many different ways, so you be the judge.
    - rhetocj23 1y ago
      [flagged]
  - dang 1y ago
    > While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it. Sounds like a job for the community! Maybe someone will track it down... Edit: I tried something like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1514764800&page=1&prefix=true&query=domains%20error&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&... (note the custom date range) but didn't find anything that quite matches your description.
    - z2 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 This was from 2017, and it made such an impression on me that I could find it on my first search attempt!
      - ontouchstart 1y ago
        “… machine learning everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a complex structure and low noise, and statistics everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a large amount of noise.”
    - ontouchstart 1y ago
      https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182
  - NooneAtAll3 1y ago
    what does irreducible error mean?
    - silverpiranha 1y ago
      [dead]
    - mikepalmer 1y ago
      And how do you know it's irreducible? In the sense of knowing there's no short program to describe it (Kolmogorov style).
eco 1y ago
That's one of the things that drives me nuts about all the public discourse about AI and our future. The vast majority of words written/spoken on the subject are by generic "thought leaders" who really have no greater understanding of AI than anyone else who uses it regularly.
- libraryofbabel 1y ago
  And the article agrees with you, and is pretty scathing about all the books except Narayanan’s (which is also the only book with a balanced anti-hype perspective): > A puzzling characteristic of many AI prophets is their unfamiliarity with the technology itself > After reading these books, I began to question whether “hype” is a sufficient term for describing an uncoordinated yet global campaign of obfuscation and manipulation advanced by many Silicon Valley leaders, researchers, and journalists
- mmaia 1y ago
  A characteristic of the field since the beginning. Reading What Computers Can't Do in college (early 2000s) was an important contrast for me. > A great misunderstanding accounts for public confusion about thinking machines, a misunderstanding perpetrated by the unrealistic claims researchers in AI have been making, claims that thinking machines are already here, or at any rate, just around the corner. > Dreyfus' last paper detailed the ongoing history of the "first step fallacy", where AI researchers tend to wildly extrapolate initial success as promising, perhaps even guaranteeing, wild future successes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus's_views_on_artificial_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus's_views_on_arti...
red75prime 1y ago
Expert futurologist? Anyway. The article has very little substance. "See those ridiculous predictions," mostly. If there's anything about fundamental or practical limitations of the current machine learning approaches (deep learning, transformers, RL, and so on), I haven't seen it.

Aravind Narayanan seems to be the only guy qualified enough to be called an expert.

dang 1y ago

HN's own https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=randomwalker https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=randomwalker!

randomwalker 1y ago
Thanks! HN was part of the origin story of the book in question. In 2018 or 2019 I saw a comment here that said that most people don't appreciate the distinction between domains with low irreducible error that benefit from fancy models with complex decision boundaries (like computer vision) and domains with high irreducible error where such models don't add much value over something simple like logistic regression. It's an obvious-in-retrospect observation, but it made me realize that this is the source of a lot of confusion and hype about AI (such as the idea that we can use it to predict crime accurately). I gave a talk elaborating on this point, which went viral, and then led to the book with my coauthor Sayash Kapoor. More surprisingly, despite being seemingly obvious it led to a productive research agenda. While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it.
- CamperBob2 1y ago
  It's hard to miss the similarity between your book's title and Cliff Stoll's 1995 Silicon Snake Oil, an indictment of the general concept of the "information superhighway" that was starting to resonate with the public. Stoll is a really smart guy, but that particular book hasn't held up too well: Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. (excerpted from the Amazon summary at https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information/dp/0385419937 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Informatio... ). So, was this something that you guys were conscious of when you chose your own book's title? How well have you future-proofed your central thesis?
  - randomwalker 1y ago
    Yes, we're aware! Fortunately our book is not a broad indictment of AI :) And none of our claims are premised on tasks people can do remaining out of reach for AI. More here: https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writing https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writi... Our more recent essay (and ongoing book project) "AI as Normal Technology" is about our vision of AI impacts over a longer timescale than "AI Snake Oil" looks at https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology I would categorize our views as techno-optimist, but people understand that term in many different ways, so you be the judge.
  - rhetocj23 1y ago
    [flagged]
- dang 1y ago
  > While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it. Sounds like a job for the community! Maybe someone will track it down... Edit: I tried something like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1514764800&page=1&prefix=true&query=domains%20error&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&... (note the custom date range) but didn't find anything that quite matches your description.
  - z2 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 This was from 2017, and it made such an impression on me that I could find it on my first search attempt!
    - ontouchstart 1y ago
      “… machine learning everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a complex structure and low noise, and statistics everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a large amount of noise.”
  - ontouchstart 1y ago
    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182
- NooneAtAll3 1y ago
  what does irreducible error mean?
  - silverpiranha 1y ago
    [dead]
  - mikepalmer 1y ago
    And how do you know it's irreducible? In the sense of knowing there's no short program to describe it (Kolmogorov style).

eco 1y ago

That's one of the things that drives me nuts about all the public discourse about AI and our future. The vast majority of words written/spoken on the subject are by generic "thought leaders" who really have no greater understanding of AI than anyone else who uses it regularly.

libraryofbabel 1y ago
And the article agrees with you, and is pretty scathing about all the books except Narayanan’s (which is also the only book with a balanced anti-hype perspective): > A puzzling characteristic of many AI prophets is their unfamiliarity with the technology itself > After reading these books, I began to question whether “hype” is a sufficient term for describing an uncoordinated yet global campaign of obfuscation and manipulation advanced by many Silicon Valley leaders, researchers, and journalists
mmaia 1y ago
A characteristic of the field since the beginning. Reading What Computers Can't Do in college (early 2000s) was an important contrast for me. > A great misunderstanding accounts for public confusion about thinking machines, a misunderstanding perpetrated by the unrealistic claims researchers in AI have been making, claims that thinking machines are already here, or at any rate, just around the corner. > Dreyfus' last paper detailed the ongoing history of the "first step fallacy", where AI researchers tend to wildly extrapolate initial success as promising, perhaps even guaranteeing, wild future successes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus's_views_on_artificial_intelligence https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hubert_Dreyfus's_views_on_arti...

red75prime 1y ago

Expert futurologist? Anyway. The article has very little substance. "See those ridiculous predictions," mostly. If there's anything about fundamental or practical limitations of the current machine learning approaches (deep learning, transformers, RL, and so on), I haven't seen it.