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I think you're misunderstanding something fundamental about how AI research works. The techniques, tools and ideas can be applied to anything by anyone. If goog

by hooande 12y ago

I think you're misunderstanding something fundamental about how AI research works. The techniques, tools and ideas can be applied to anything by anyone. If google releases a deep learning framework, it can be used for cancer research or economic planning or anything else. Just because it was developed in the context of advertising doesn't mean that the applications are limited to that domain. The idea that "some of the greatest minds of our generation are spending their time figuring out how to get people to click on more ads" is a bit of a myth. They're figuring out new algorithms, faster methods and new technological concepts that are being applied to ads first. The truth is that the research divisions of Google, Microsoft, IBM, etc publish a lot of research that isn't related to advertising at all, possibly the majority of what they publish. The best and brightest engineers are interested in engineering and theory, and despite working for advertising companies they tend to come up with good ideas that can be used in a wide variety of applications.

SwellJoe 12y ago
And, I think you're overly optimistic about the generality of some of these problems and the effort going into them. I believe a significant portion of the implementation effort is going toward more effectively delivering ads and consumption, whether they're also writing a paper about indirectly related research or not. Google's most profitable business, by far, is their ads business. They would be crazy to not expend significant money and effort to retain their lead in that space. Other stuff that comes out of it (as nice as often it is, and as much as I enjoy it) is often just a pleasant side effect. But, I could be wrong. I would also like to point out that I don't have other ideas on funding AI or big data research. I'm just uncomfortable with it, though I don't expect others to necessarily share that discomfort.
- walod 12y ago
  It's also going into surveillance, warfare and predictive policing etc. I believe this is mainly because only big companies or deep pocketed individuals have real access, but there could come a "golden age" some time later where the general public can access truly powerful API's and the like, and then we would see a whole new frontier emerge. That is, if they can generalize the algorithms and make a workable product that doesn't need so much manual training and oversight by the engineers creating the AI.

by hooande 12y ago

SwellJoe 12y ago

And, I think you're overly optimistic about the generality of some of these problems and the effort going into them. I believe a significant portion of the implementation effort is going toward more effectively delivering ads and consumption, whether they're also writing a paper about indirectly related research or not. Google's most profitable business, by far, is their ads business. They would be crazy to not expend significant money and effort to retain their lead in that space. Other stuff that comes out of it (as nice as often it is, and as much as I enjoy it) is often just a pleasant side effect. But, I could be wrong. I would also like to point out that I don't have other ideas on funding AI or big data research. I'm just uncomfortable with it, though I don't expect others to necessarily share that discomfort.

walod 12y ago
It's also going into surveillance, warfare and predictive policing etc. I believe this is mainly because only big companies or deep pocketed individuals have real access, but there could come a "golden age" some time later where the general public can access truly powerful API's and the like, and then we would see a whole new frontier emerge. That is, if they can generalize the algorithms and make a workable product that doesn't need so much manual training and oversight by the engineers creating the AI.