"Ali Rahimi, a researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) at Google in San Francisco, California, took a swipe at...
Originally shared by Wayne Radinsky
"Ali Rahimi, a researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) at Google in San Francisco, California, took a swipe at his field last December -- and received a 40-second ovation for it. Speaking at an AI conference, Rahimi charged that machine learning algorithms, in which computers learn through trial and error, have become a form of 'alchemy.' Researchers, he said, do not know why some algorithms work and others don't, nor do they have rigorous criteria for choosing one AI architecture over another."
"Without deep understanding of the basic tools needed to build and train new algorithms, he says, researchers creating AIs resort to hearsay, like medieval alchemists. 'People gravitate around cargo-cult practices,' relying on 'folklore and magic spells,' adds François Chollet, a computer scientist at Google in Mountain View, California. For example, he says, they adopt pet methods to tune their AIs' 'learning rates' -- how much an algorithm corrects itself after each mistake -- without understanding why one is better than others. In other cases, AI researchers training their algorithms are simply stumbling in the dark."
"Csaba Szepesvári, a computer scientist at DeepMind in London, says the field also needs to reduce its emphasis on competitive testing. At present, a paper is more likely to be published if the reported algorithm beats some benchmark than if the paper sheds light on the software's inner workings."
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ai-researchers-allege-machine-learning-alchemy
"Ali Rahimi, a researcher in artificial intelligence (AI) at Google in San Francisco, California, took a swipe at his field last December -- and received a 40-second ovation for it. Speaking at an AI conference, Rahimi charged that machine learning algorithms, in which computers learn through trial and error, have become a form of 'alchemy.' Researchers, he said, do not know why some algorithms work and others don't, nor do they have rigorous criteria for choosing one AI architecture over another."
"Without deep understanding of the basic tools needed to build and train new algorithms, he says, researchers creating AIs resort to hearsay, like medieval alchemists. 'People gravitate around cargo-cult practices,' relying on 'folklore and magic spells,' adds François Chollet, a computer scientist at Google in Mountain View, California. For example, he says, they adopt pet methods to tune their AIs' 'learning rates' -- how much an algorithm corrects itself after each mistake -- without understanding why one is better than others. In other cases, AI researchers training their algorithms are simply stumbling in the dark."
"Csaba Szepesvári, a computer scientist at DeepMind in London, says the field also needs to reduce its emphasis on competitive testing. At present, a paper is more likely to be published if the reported algorithm beats some benchmark than if the paper sheds light on the software's inner workings."
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ai-researchers-allege-machine-learning-alchemy
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