- #1
AaronK
- 35
- 14
I am an undergraduate student pursuing computer science in the Southwestern United States (I just switched my major to comp. sci actually). Recently, I came across an individual who claimed to research AI professionally and who expressed to me the following view after some discussion of various technologies and the rate of advancement of such tech (this took place on a separate online forum). Here is what he said:
"I can sympathize with your point of view, but from the point of view of an actual AI researcher like myself, you have it exactly backwards. In reality, all the amazing new stuff like self-driving cars and Go AIs are things that are horribly old hat. The machine learning techniques they are based on date from the 1980s, for Turing's sake. While it may seem to the layperson that these technologies emerged from nowhere, to people in the field they have been long expected and in fact have been disappointingly slow.
It was really a big company with a lot of money like Google throwing real money behind the field that has allowed it to advance so quickly in the public eye, but from a theoretical perspective this isn't anything new. Only a company like Google has the budget to put together all the GPUs and CPUs AlphaGo is composed of and pay programmers familiar with Go to work on it for years just for a PR stunt -- but in reality the methods for AlphaGo are decades old and could have been done long ago. Same deal with all the resources needed for the self-driving car. So from my perspective, the exact opposite has been happening: slower and slower scientific progress, punctuated occasionally by amazing engineering stunts from big companies with a lot of money."
After reading this individual's response, I have to admit I am doubtful. Would you guys say there is any significant veracity to this person's view? Beyond the fact that apparently these "old" machine learning techniques were pioneered in the 80's, would you say this individual writes with accuracy?
Would you necessarily have a definitive response to such an individual, for or against this view?
I would very much love to read what anyone has to say regarding this, and would also greatly appreciate where you think machine intelligence will be in the next 10 year span (speculation is absolutely acceptable). I hope to resolve my thinking on this matter.
"I can sympathize with your point of view, but from the point of view of an actual AI researcher like myself, you have it exactly backwards. In reality, all the amazing new stuff like self-driving cars and Go AIs are things that are horribly old hat. The machine learning techniques they are based on date from the 1980s, for Turing's sake. While it may seem to the layperson that these technologies emerged from nowhere, to people in the field they have been long expected and in fact have been disappointingly slow.
It was really a big company with a lot of money like Google throwing real money behind the field that has allowed it to advance so quickly in the public eye, but from a theoretical perspective this isn't anything new. Only a company like Google has the budget to put together all the GPUs and CPUs AlphaGo is composed of and pay programmers familiar with Go to work on it for years just for a PR stunt -- but in reality the methods for AlphaGo are decades old and could have been done long ago. Same deal with all the resources needed for the self-driving car. So from my perspective, the exact opposite has been happening: slower and slower scientific progress, punctuated occasionally by amazing engineering stunts from big companies with a lot of money."
After reading this individual's response, I have to admit I am doubtful. Would you guys say there is any significant veracity to this person's view? Beyond the fact that apparently these "old" machine learning techniques were pioneered in the 80's, would you say this individual writes with accuracy?
Would you necessarily have a definitive response to such an individual, for or against this view?
I would very much love to read what anyone has to say regarding this, and would also greatly appreciate where you think machine intelligence will be in the next 10 year span (speculation is absolutely acceptable). I hope to resolve my thinking on this matter.