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What's more important, winning a competition or improving AI for the entire world? Do the ends justify the means? I Don't think we should be too hard on Baidu,

What's more important, winning a competition or improving AI for the entire world? Do the ends justify the means? I Don't think we should be too hard on Baidu, considering they are attempting to improve their algorithm for the interest of humanity (or evil AI that will bring an end to mankind, depending on how you look at it).

komaromy 11y ago
They could have used an alternative data set as I assume all the other competitors are doing.
netheril96 11y ago
> I Don't think we should be too hard on Baidu, considering they are attempting to improve their algorithm for the interest of humanity They are not improving the algorithm for the interest of humanity. They submitted and obtained test results much more frequently than allowed. With that information, they can tune parameters to more closely fit the test data. Basically it is like scoring higher on an exam where some of the questions have been leaked. It does not suggest you now have a better understanding of the subject.
- squigs25 11y ago
  If they are building an algorithm which overfits to training data, their algorithm will lose performance on in the actual validation test. It is NOT like looking at leaked answers. It's like re-reading the textbook more than everyone else. Definitely an unfair advantage however.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - varelse 11y ago
    You misunderstand. They're using repeated attempts on the test set to improve their network. That is equivalent to training on the test set and that is unequivocably cheating.
jusben1369 11y ago
That argument might make sense if this competition was the only avenue in the world for improving AI.
ohitsdom 11y ago
Their actions were motivated to win the competition, not improve AI in general. There are many image sets the Baidu team could have used to test on. They used the competition's image set an unfair number of times to tweak their computation to score better on those specific images (not to improve it overall).
- caskance 11y ago
  If those two motivations are not aligned then the competition is poorly designed.

komaromy 11y ago

They could have used an alternative data set as I assume all the other competitors are doing.

netheril96 11y ago

> I Don't think we should be too hard on Baidu, considering they are attempting to improve their algorithm for the interest of humanity They are not improving the algorithm for the interest of humanity. They submitted and obtained test results much more frequently than allowed. With that information, they can tune parameters to more closely fit the test data. Basically it is like scoring higher on an exam where some of the questions have been leaked. It does not suggest you now have a better understanding of the subject.

squigs25 11y ago
If they are building an algorithm which overfits to training data, their algorithm will lose performance on in the actual validation test. It is NOT like looking at leaked answers. It's like re-reading the textbook more than everyone else. Definitely an unfair advantage however.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- varelse 11y ago
  You misunderstand. They're using repeated attempts on the test set to improve their network. That is equivalent to training on the test set and that is unequivocably cheating.

jusben1369 11y ago

That argument might make sense if this competition was the only avenue in the world for improving AI.

ohitsdom 11y ago

Their actions were motivated to win the competition, not improve AI in general. There are many image sets the Baidu team could have used to test on. They used the competition's image set an unfair number of times to tweak their computation to score better on those specific images (not to improve it overall).

caskance 11y ago
If those two motivations are not aligned then the competition is poorly designed.