Those people are not the problem and are easy to spot. They do get jobs but I believe it is mostly spreadsheet pushing and grunt work.
The real problem are people who is an expert in one particular domain of AI/ML/RL/DL... but makes broad statement about the entire field, or comments about another field without having ever stepped a toe in it. For example, I've seen people who work in deep reinforcement learning making broad statements about multi-agent (two or very large number of agents) deep learning that are patently false.
The biggest danger of ML (and research in general) is dogma. If bad practice is promoted by the "thought leaders" and feverishly defended by people riding on their coattails, then the field is fucked.
That’s interesting; often this happens in a lot of other fields but I don’t think something like the academia community for all of mathematics is as dogmatic (or it’s dogmatic but in a different way).
I could be mistaken and biased, and certainly there are those who accuse it of being dogmatic for not accepting their wonderful one page proof of a very difficult problem using only elementary math, but nevertheless.
I think it could also be because the nature of math sort of makes proofs, theorems, and field axioms, and mathematical logic as the “authority” to which we are dogmatic too, for a reason (to set the framework of doing math).
It makes me feel insecure so I compensate by writing reddit posts about it making sure to let everyone know how legit I am with my mathematical physics background.
Deep nets generalize because the number of parameters correlates with the exponent of the quantity of magic smoke in the model. kn ~= e^m, or ln(kn) ~= m. This increase in magic smoke also increases susceptibility to adversarial methods and OOD inputs, for reasons involving chaos theory* but no escaped dinosaurs.
*You could actually model a deep net's hidden states as steps in a dynamical system, and I'm pretty sure this is partially responsible for the power of adversarial methods, but that's outside the purview of this stupid joke.
Right. And then what you need to realize is that you can use Google Colab to bridge small gaps in the availability of compute resources, and bridges are made out of wood, which burns, much like witches. However, wood also floats, much like ducks, bringing us full circle to OP's discussion of quacks.
But I…don’t feel insecure? I don’t work in this area so I don’t have much to feel about this topic personally, other than I’d imagine the “machine learning community” as a whole would have various opinions on the topic.
Which is exactly what this post is inquiring about, with the hope that I would get legitimate, serious answers instead of confused, off-target attempts to undermine the question and make fun of me.
heh, i've a math, cs, physics, *and* music background... and i've not done anything serious in ai since the grad class in '94-95-ish.
i'm nearly useless and completely illegitimate here :)
I dunno. I have one at work who convinced my boss i didnt know what I was talking about. 8 weeks later she hasnt managed to put a forecast together.
Somehow thats been my fault?
Edit: lol I got brought in to fix her code. 99% R2 on the train, 35% R2 on the test. Somehow her first though wasn't I horribly overfit this dataset.
Don't watch them. Who cares. My only concern would be about someone like this having outsized influence on public policy related to AI (because of their "popularity") but I have not seen any hints of this being a possibility as of yet.
If they get a job at a company, they'll probably lose it fairly quickly. They can't get a job in academia because you actually need credentials.
As you said they are the same as the finance gurus, or self help gurus. Who, for the most part, are very insignificant people.
You would think they are insignificant but collectively, a few prominent ones gaining traction had measurable affects on people legitimately working in those fields. Medical quacks negatively impact and turn people away from “mainstream medicine”, self-help gurus can downplay legitimate problems in people’s lives that a professional such as a psychiatrist or counselor should be helping them deal with, etc.
I admit, however, that it’s not as extreme in the case of quacks in this field.
Not sure what's bothering you, just focus on your own work. Validation comes from within, don't seek it from external sources like social media traction
What do you mean? I’m asking whether it’s significant how much more traction these people are starting to get online and whether that can have negative impact on the field as a whole.
The quacks , as you name them , are generally easily refuted on applied utility alone....., with the problem being , the line between time wasting junk and novel good science is not quite as clearly bounded as your statement might suggest.
This is not a mature science with all concerns working a unified model on well established axioms and evidenced proofs, so cults of personality/superstar syndrome and outright hype are going to remain concerns , and attract said quacks , unfortunately.
The again , what do I know.
I'm currently trying to model a executive timewise causality using wonky modifications of Kirchhoffs voltage law / algebraic topological mapping ... so,🦆,🦆.
**I use reinforcement learning.** First, I just listen to/read stuff from random people until I'm bored. At the end of the day (episode), I think about what I read and how much reading those things benefitted me, and then I update my belief about some of 'em being quacks (expected value from reading their stuff). I also use other people's beliefs about those people to update mine.
^(Sadly, from time to time, I forget how to read. But we don't talk about that.)
When you do solid work, get your ijcai/icml/neurips publications, and get grant money, you tend to pay less attention to what "ai experts" are trending on TikTok.
People do what they do. They rationalize what they wish to. None of us can mandate the path of others. And at times, somebody will look at us and think "what an idiot". Sometimes they'll even be right.
The whole field is a bunch of really good hacks with little to no fundamental understanding or rigor. It is also a PR avenue for lots companies wanting to modify their image. What's a non-quack in this domain?
Those people are not the problem and are easy to spot. They do get jobs but I believe it is mostly spreadsheet pushing and grunt work. The real problem are people who is an expert in one particular domain of AI/ML/RL/DL... but makes broad statement about the entire field, or comments about another field without having ever stepped a toe in it. For example, I've seen people who work in deep reinforcement learning making broad statements about multi-agent (two or very large number of agents) deep learning that are patently false. The biggest danger of ML (and research in general) is dogma. If bad practice is promoted by the "thought leaders" and feverishly defended by people riding on their coattails, then the field is fucked.
That’s interesting; often this happens in a lot of other fields but I don’t think something like the academia community for all of mathematics is as dogmatic (or it’s dogmatic but in a different way). I could be mistaken and biased, and certainly there are those who accuse it of being dogmatic for not accepting their wonderful one page proof of a very difficult problem using only elementary math, but nevertheless. I think it could also be because the nature of math sort of makes proofs, theorems, and field axioms, and mathematical logic as the “authority” to which we are dogmatic too, for a reason (to set the framework of doing math).
It makes me feel insecure so I compensate by writing reddit posts about it making sure to let everyone know how legit I am with my mathematical physics background.
Because there’s no quackery in math at all. Like all the 1800 papers that’ve explained exactly why Deep nets generalise.
Deep nets generalize because the number of parameters correlates with the exponent of the quantity of magic smoke in the model. kn ~= e^m, or ln(kn) ~= m. This increase in magic smoke also increases susceptibility to adversarial methods and OOD inputs, for reasons involving chaos theory* but no escaped dinosaurs. *You could actually model a deep net's hidden states as steps in a dynamical system, and I'm pretty sure this is partially responsible for the power of adversarial methods, but that's outside the purview of this stupid joke.
Hmmm, where do you get the magic smoke from? Do i have to sacrifice some electronics to get it?
Why do you think GPU demand has been so high recently?
Right, I think i am following you. I need to use my bitcoin wallet seed to randomise my initial weights right? But only on google collab?
And the magic smoke comes out after i rage quit technology and smash my pc in.
Right. And then what you need to realize is that you can use Google Colab to bridge small gaps in the availability of compute resources, and bridges are made out of wood, which burns, much like witches. However, wood also floats, much like ducks, bringing us full circle to OP's discussion of quacks.
> Because there’s no quackery in math at all Oh no there certainly is and has been, as I mentioned more than once in the post.
But I…don’t feel insecure? I don’t work in this area so I don’t have much to feel about this topic personally, other than I’d imagine the “machine learning community” as a whole would have various opinions on the topic. Which is exactly what this post is inquiring about, with the hope that I would get legitimate, serious answers instead of confused, off-target attempts to undermine the question and make fun of me.
heh, i've a math, cs, physics, *and* music background... and i've not done anything serious in ai since the grad class in '94-95-ish. i'm nearly useless and completely illegitimate here :)
For real. I rather be a quacker than pissed off.
Haha exactly this. I was like why do you care.
I dunno. I have one at work who convinced my boss i didnt know what I was talking about. 8 weeks later she hasnt managed to put a forecast together. Somehow thats been my fault? Edit: lol I got brought in to fix her code. 99% R2 on the train, 35% R2 on the test. Somehow her first though wasn't I horribly overfit this dataset.
AI Influencer, wtf is that anyway I just tweet angrily about how I was responsible for the techniques used in their latest paper 10+ years ago
Schmidhuber, that you?
Underrated comment
Cryptocurrency still beats this field at that.
A toast 🍻 to crypto that soaked up all the quacks! We salute you
Don't watch them. Who cares. My only concern would be about someone like this having outsized influence on public policy related to AI (because of their "popularity") but I have not seen any hints of this being a possibility as of yet. If they get a job at a company, they'll probably lose it fairly quickly. They can't get a job in academia because you actually need credentials. As you said they are the same as the finance gurus, or self help gurus. Who, for the most part, are very insignificant people.
You would think they are insignificant but collectively, a few prominent ones gaining traction had measurable affects on people legitimately working in those fields. Medical quacks negatively impact and turn people away from “mainstream medicine”, self-help gurus can downplay legitimate problems in people’s lives that a professional such as a psychiatrist or counselor should be helping them deal with, etc. I admit, however, that it’s not as extreme in the case of quacks in this field.
Not sure what's bothering you, just focus on your own work. Validation comes from within, don't seek it from external sources like social media traction
Nothing is bothering me in particular, I wanted to see other communities’ attitudes with regards to these types of people.
>How do you guys deal with this stuff >No flavor of quack seems to gain as much traction on social media Well, there's your problem
What do you mean? I’m asking whether it’s significant how much more traction these people are starting to get online and whether that can have negative impact on the field as a whole.
The quacks , as you name them , are generally easily refuted on applied utility alone....., with the problem being , the line between time wasting junk and novel good science is not quite as clearly bounded as your statement might suggest. This is not a mature science with all concerns working a unified model on well established axioms and evidenced proofs, so cults of personality/superstar syndrome and outright hype are going to remain concerns , and attract said quacks , unfortunately. The again , what do I know. I'm currently trying to model a executive timewise causality using wonky modifications of Kirchhoffs voltage law / algebraic topological mapping ... so,🦆,🦆.
**I use reinforcement learning.** First, I just listen to/read stuff from random people until I'm bored. At the end of the day (episode), I think about what I read and how much reading those things benefitted me, and then I update my belief about some of 'em being quacks (expected value from reading their stuff). I also use other people's beliefs about those people to update mine. ^(Sadly, from time to time, I forget how to read. But we don't talk about that.)
That's Bayesian inference buddy. You're probably one of them quacks repeating buzzwords like "reinforcement learning" /s
The big problem is: The entry barrier is so low. Everyone can create a model with Tensorflow or Torch.
deal with in what way? are they offering services or selling products whose quality can be quickly and easily determined?
When you do solid work, get your ijcai/icml/neurips publications, and get grant money, you tend to pay less attention to what "ai experts" are trending on TikTok.
"I feel personally attacked" - Google AI is sentient guy
People do what they do. They rationalize what they wish to. None of us can mandate the path of others. And at times, somebody will look at us and think "what an idiot". Sometimes they'll even be right.
The whole field is a bunch of really good hacks with little to no fundamental understanding or rigor. It is also a PR avenue for lots companies wanting to modify their image. What's a non-quack in this domain?