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From the video, he also seems like he's greatly overhyping the whole thing (as is everyone else, of course). Genetic algorithms are not even remotely close to h
by benaiah 14y ago
From the video, he also seems like he's greatly overhyping the whole thing (as is everyone else, of course). Genetic algorithms are not even remotely close to human intelligence, quantitatively or qualitatively, so his claims to that effect are nonsensical and misleading.
One common strain I see with child prodigies, or whatever you want to call them, is that their accomplishments are often greatly exaggerated and they usually don't end up contributing as much as many who make great contributions later in life (few famous historical scientists and artists, with the exception perhaps of Mozart, were what we would consider child prodigies, and many were quite the opposite). I don't know if it's caused by resting on their laurels, burning out, or them just not being as good as they claimed, but it doesn't seem like a healthy model at all.
Summly in particular doesn't come across as being all that complicated - genetic analysis of text is a well-researched and thoroughly trodden part of applied complexity theory - but rather a smart business move made by investors and businessmen mostly behind the scenes. D’Aloisio comes across more as a poster boy than anything - he's put up as this child prodigy, but I've never read or heard anything particularly new, profound, or even that interesting from him.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- minikomi 14y agoSounds more like regression to the mean than anything else. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regression_toward_the_mean
- witek 14y ago>few famous historical scientists and artists Plenty of artists: Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, Bizet, Bieber (all right, maybe not the last one) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_prodigies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_music_prodigies Others: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_child_prodigies
- vixen99 14y agoNot forgetting Mendelssohn as the prime example. Neither Mozart nor Chopin wrote anything comparable in stature to the Octet written when Felix was 16 years old. It's one of the those pieces where within a minute or so you simply 'know' you're listening to a work of genius. Yes, entirely o/t especially on this site. Sorry!
- witek 14y agoSomewhat subjective :] I love Chopin myself.
- clicks 14y agoI don't like that the word 'child prodigy' is thrown around for this. For Mozart, Chopin, Liszt, etc. you simply have individuals who were all offspring of musicians, who started at young ages, who both listened to music played by their parents for hours and practiced it for themselves for hours more. Likewise with mathematicians, programming prodigies, etc. And, Chopin's later work is indeed much more mature -- compare the difference for example between the Nocturne in E minor which he wrote when he was 19, and Nocturne in C-Minor, No 21, which he wrote shortly before his death. The difference is pretty stark -- and even non-musicians can sort of detect the growth. I can say likewise for most composers, their craft honed with time -- it's difficult for me to think of any composer who composed something tremendous in the very beginning just out of nowhere -- that kind of stuff doesn't happen.
- witek 14y agoI'm not sure calling Mozart and Chopin prodigies qualifies as throwing terms around [lightly]. With so much recorded music being created over the millennia (since the invention of musical notation), these two, among a few others, stand out as undeniable geniuses of their craft. It also so happens that they started to make waves very early, which wasn't that easy to accomplish in an artist's lifetime back then, especially when you consider that Chopin gave only some 30 public performances in the last 19 years of his life spent in Paris and away from oppressed Poland. Chopin was seven years old when he composed two critically-acclaimed Polonaises, in G minor and B-flat major. Would you really not call him a prodigy?
- tuxguy 14y agoThe techcrunch article[1] mentioned SRI as a partner. Just a wild guess, but maybe all the "intelligence" of the app is courtesy SRI, which has proven expertise in the machine learning & natural language processing fields. 1. http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-video-interview/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/11/01/summly-app-nick-daloisio-vi...