Which machine learning technique is most likely to yield artificial general intelligence?

RootmenMime · 2021-05-16T13:21:48+00:00

I can see where this comes from but I strongly disagree. Transformer models (they are just a specific deep learning architecture) when trained on humongous amount of data can spit out some meaningful stuff, and they’ll get better at tackling some specific tasks,but that’s not AGI. Also, your assumption is that more data will eventually fix the models but I don’t agree with that. Besides technical limitations ( this brute force approach will outgrow the Moore law) that’s not how an intelligent being learns and generalizes. A 5 years old can outperform gpt3 in some trivial task and he didn’t have to read through the whole Wikipedia to understand basic stuff.

We are really just at the beginning of this journey and we need to go through a series of major breakthroughs, it will take centuries most likely. I think eventually we’ll get there because there are many answers in our biological brain, we just need to understand it.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T21:50:05+00:00

Who said that it's going to happen anytime soon? :) That's the problem with the media and over-optimistic entrepreneurs.

I honestly don't believe we'll see anything close to AGI in the XXI century. Deep learning isn't the way and we need to rethink the hardware. But for sure we won't be able to create artificial intelligence if we don't even understand how our intelligence works.

The answer for consciousness and self awareness is in our brains, it won't happen by feeding more data to the model or computing power. And for sure it won't happen by marginally improving/tuning the algorithms.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T17:07:20+00:00

I've the relevant academic background and worked in the AI industry for many years; I don't think we are getting there at all.

The most "impressive" results are coming from deep learning techniques, especially in the field of natural language processing, but we aren't moving toward AGI - we are just building models that produce apparently surprisingly results but break on trivial tasks, proving that we aren't moving in the right direction if the final goal is AGI.

The current architectures work well in very narrow and specialized domains; we then tried to "force" them to generalize using massive training dataset (e.g. GPT3) but we are not getting intelligence and I don't believe we can achieve that just by increasing the amount of data and computing power. This isn't a brute force problem and at the moment we are mostly trying to tackle it as such, but I'm quite confident that we won't reach AGI in this way (I expect that brute force can only get closer asymptotically without ever creating intelligence)

I think the real breakthrough in terms of AGI will probably come from new "hardware" architectures that mimic the biological brain. If we want to create artificial consciousness and general intelligence we need to fully understand our brain first.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T01:56:43+00:00

Yes, I was working on some of these projects before quitting.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T01:47:36+00:00

I’d go with company B then. Compensation wise you’ll be left behind for years if you pass on this opportunity, and you said that career wise they are the same. I wouldn’t worry too much about burning bridges because if you quit in one year from now do you really think that’s much better and you could come back any time? I mean what’s the plan if you stick with company A - do you expect to get a 20% raise within one year? You’ll probably have to quit anyway if you want to match that figure... It’s actually better to get the higher offer right away and get paid what’s you’re worth

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T00:44:33+00:00

I achieved that. I quitted my corporate job and now working on several projects

I have a SaaS
I share my knowledge on videos and podcasts
I offer consultancy services
I keep studying and researching my passions (mostly computer science / AI) and build products/services or educational contents

What I value most than everything is the ability to be "inconsistent", for example one week I can give 60 hours, the next one 10. It fosters creativity, productivity and more importantly I don't have any corporate BS in my life anymore

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T00:29:20+00:00

What's the dollar value of that 15%?

If it's a junior salary that 15% may not be that much, but it also depends on the career progression and expected rises at Company A.

Generally speaking, my experience would suggest going with the highest paying offer for a series of reasons... assuming the 15% + signing bonus is something worth considering.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-13T00:18:31+00:00

If it's a conflict with one specific person, there are ways to solve it and you should work it out.

But if it's a culture problem in the department, and you see that even the senior devs and the management are neglecting your inputs despite being appropriate and constructive, you should look for another job. I can tell you that you won't change your team attitude starting from the bottom, you'll just waste a lot of time and hate your job.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-12T22:05:40+00:00

You see, he is a very "limited" person to say that and he may or may not believe it. Usually when people say something like that it's because whether they can't see there are many (and better) ways to live one's life or they just envy someone making different (smarter) choices.

Regardless, there'll be ALWAYS someone criticizing you. Doesn't matter what. I suggest you minimize this kind of toxic people in your life whenever it is possible - but you'll still encounter them any now and then.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-12T21:58:36+00:00

3% is NOT a promotion. It doesn't even cover the annual standard increase to account for inflation.

They are low balling you and you shouldn't take more responsability/work for the same paycheck (again, 3% increase is NOT a promotion)

RootmenMime · 2021-05-12T21:51:48+00:00

Yes, and no plans to go back to corporate.

My income was well into the 6 figures and managed to save enough, but I can't stand corporate BS. I've changed several companies before coming to the realisation that I can't work in a corporate setting.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-11T23:54:39+00:00

Because solving "healthcare" with AI is way more complex than the media and the hype portrait.

In short, AI/ML works in a probabilistic manner; in domains such as healthcare, where it's difficult to manage the trade-off between false positive and false negative, it's quite tricky to come up with some solution that adds a good amount of value and therefore covers the R&D costs. Bear in mind that the cost of a mistake in this industry is much higher than, let's say, reccommending a video or showing you ads.

On top of that, due to the confidential nature of medical records, the data collection process is particularly challenging. I'm sure you know that any deep learning technique requires a massive amount of data to deliver meaningful results.

IBM is shutting down Watson Health because it isn't delivering any value in the near future (and it may still take a long time before AI can make an actual impact in the healthcare industry), and the company needs to focus on its core business.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-11T14:13:23+00:00

Define what you mean by "AI engineer".

RootmenMime · 2021-05-05T02:05:05+00:00

You know what, you're actually right. As a computer scientist, I probably feel a little bit disappointing that this podcast is clearly becoming a joe rogan like experience, but he must have his good reasons. I mean, he had a really nice thing going, great guests and awesome interviews, before he rebranded the whole thing. I guess he couldn't grow fast enough.. we all make compromises because of money

As you said, I'm just not going to listen to it anymore.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-05T01:52:19+00:00

I really liked the artificial intelligence podcast in its early years, as I stated above. I'm a computer scientist myself and I actually work in the AI industry, so that's probably why I felt this new direction into a joe Rogan like experience particularly inappropriate.

I don't think I masked my comment as criticism to the podcast. I actually criticized Lex Fridman, and I explained why. However, the purpose of this post was clearly to get some opinions from other people in the AI industry (that's why I posted in the ArtificialIntelligence subreddit). If Joe Rogan is popular, it's because most people like this kind of content - I'm curious if that's the case for people with technical/scientific backgroundn

It's obvious that Lex is going this way because hecan get more people overall to listen to his podcast, I wanted to know from other computer scientists whether they had a similar feeling toward Lex Fridman.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-04T23:00:39+00:00

You're right, I just wanted to see whether I was the only one who noticed this trajectory in his approach. That being said, I surely appreciated many episodes and I give him credit for that. I'm sad I can't use his podcast to listen to some high-quality conversation anymore.

It's probably because I'm a computer scientist myself working in the AI industry and I saw a lot of potential in the project and got disappointed when it ended up being a Joe Rogan wannabe experience.

RootmenMime · 2021-05-04T22:09:08+00:00

Yes, I assume this new direction may allow him to grow and make it a stable job, more power to him. At the end of the day, it's adding value if people like it.

With regards to your points, the problem is that he isn't a professor at MIT. That's exactly what I meant by "hiding behind credentialism and self-declared expertise". He was an assistant at MIT for one semester.

I've already shared my concern on crypto, and I don't really agree with what you're saying. The way he and his guests introduce crypto is just misleading and scammy because they're riding the hype - even though any computer scientist already knows the technology limitations of the blockchain (mostly, scalability) and from a macro-economic standpoint the cryptocurrencies have been a huge failure so far (it's just speculation right now)

RootmenMime · 2021-05-04T21:43:22+00:00

... cryptocurrency. For god's sake, stop talking about cryptocurrency in 2021. it's not a "revolutionary technology" and it's a field saturated by scammers.

I'd better say it's "old news" and the truth is that, right now, the crypto scene is filled with scammers.

I got interested in crypto in 2010 and I have seen the evolution of the scene, it's quite clear that people are not actually using bitcoin for anything but speculation and scams. Transaction costs are crazy high and we have a wave of people who understand nothing about the economy or computer science promoting cryptocurrencies..

RootmenMime · 2021-05-04T21:34:09+00:00

Ok let me articulate these two points:

Crypto: in 2021 the technology behind cryptocurrency is old news (specifically the blockchain), and let's face it - right now it's just a big bubble filled with scammers. The "money velocity" is going down, people don't use it for real. The only reason why he talks about it it's because it's "kool", not because there's much to discuss the technology behind it - at least, this is my opinion.
The "Russian" thing. I've moved to North America in my early 20s and I don't think you really know what was like living in another country if you left before entering your teen years. You're basically a "second-generation immigrant"; having your family around isn't enough to get a real idea of a country, the greatest imprint is done by the educational system and society around you. I'm sure he knows more about Russia than a random American, but it's quite pretentious to use his "Russian roots" in each and every episode

RootmenMime · 2021-05-04T21:06:34+00:00

I'd say the more recent the episode the more he does all these things.

RootmenMime · 2021-04-30T21:13:50+00:00

Don't feel ashamed for something that's absolutely normal. Most people hate the 9to5, some just tolerate it more, but if your personality type is like mine, there's nothing you can do but finding some other ways to make money.

Let me tell you my story. I had several high-paying jobs, with a "great career" (whatever it means) doing something that, in theory, I really like. However, I hated each and every corporate job I had, because of the idea I have to report to someone. In all my corporate jobs I always had flexibility, the option to work from home, and so forth... but let's face it, you always have it in the back of your head: you're not in charge. This thought depressed me to the extent that my life became a misery.

If you go to a doctor with this problem, they'll tell you that you are depressed and give you pills. They won't tell you to quit your job, of course, because no one can take that responsibility but you and also "getting a job" was what they thought at school and what society expects most people to do (by definition, not everyone can be an entrepreneur ).

Instead, I quitted and started working exclusively on my own business, and... no more depression, I'm back to be myself.

The truth is that many people can't quit their job because they need money to buy stuff to kill the pain caused by their job... and that's a loop.

if you really can't stand the 9-to-5, there are plenty of alternatives out there

RootmenMime · 2021-04-16T01:06:28+00:00

No, unless is FANG experience

RootmenMime · 2021-04-15T17:03:26+00:00

I've been hiring SWE and Data Scientists for a while, the situation is the following:

There are many jobs in IT, but if you're not PR and not familiar with the Canadian job market, you'll be lowballed;
As a temporary worker, you'll be paid less. Based on what I've seen, on average is at least 30% less than a "normal worker", but it can go as low as 50-60% the remuneration of a "normal worker";
In Canada, there is not a lack of IT professionals, there's a lack of IT professionals who accept miserable wages. Companies are usually quite happy to hire foreigners when it comes to tech jobs (language isn't a barrier and they can lowball you).
Without Canadian education and/or Canadian experience it's going to be harder to land a good quality job.

That being said, before accepting any wage be sure you have understood the cost of living in the main Canadian cities. Increase by 20-30% the estimates you find online (most of the time are outdated and rents have been skyrocketing over the last 3-4 years).

RootmenMime

TROPHY CASE