Gary Marcus

My beef with the “ANN are abstractions of the Brain” trope is that it is so vague that it is almost meaningless. It purposefully avoid all the things our models don’t include 1/2

The fact that #ANNs are inspired by the #brain is regularly used it to promote the idea that (1)we do have good understanding of brain function or (2)that we’re close to #AGI. Both of them false. I’m afraid this trope (used to scare or to sell something) is not value-neutral 2/2

By whom? Citations?

Obviously this is not necessarily @DeepMindAI fault, and sloppy journalism plays a big role. But these are examples how a valid analogy often backfires when is interpreted literally. Unfortunately, that's the way is often used when pitching companies and many VCs buy it 3/

I'm a big believer that #ANNs are a great tool to improve our knowledge of the brain, but often think the "ANN as abstraction of the brain" analogy does more harm than benefit /end

You need to separate your concern about hype in the popular press from the use of ANNs in neuroscience. ANNs are a very useful model in neuroscience, and we shouldn't shy away from that because Deep Mind's PR ppl go a bit far sometimes.