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Machine learning has the potential to make a big difference in solving some of humanity's biggest problems -- making renewables more efficient, optimizing our transportation networks, recycling our trash, making medical care more broadly accessible, accelerating science.
Most of it will take the form of 10-50% improvements to existing processes. It won't always be very sexy, but in aggregate, it will be transformational. It seems to me we aren't investing nearly enough researcher brain power on this type of impactful, "boring" applied problems.
Meanwhile, what is our community focusing on? What are the media & public focusing on? Misplaced hype. Fantasies about lofty AGI research that is sure to generate unlimited profits. Fantasies of AI apocalypse peddled by those who need you to be afraid. It's a bit disheartening.
Perhaps billions of $ will be wasted on those who make the craziest claims or shout the loudest -- or those whose tales of the future most accurately match the fantasies of tech billionaires. If that happens, the lack of ROI will eventually lead to a new AI research winter.
This may slow us down at a critical moment. Let's counter that. Let's pay more attention to those who are working on important applied problems. Let's fund them. Let's tell their stories, so others will be inspired to follow them. Let's work on the research & tools they'll need
If you know of any team or individual working under the radar on applying ML to solve an ambitious problem that benefits the public good, please reply and share their work. I'll amplify. Very curious to see what will show up :)
You inspire me, @fchollet ! I wish I can make a positive impact on humanity in the future using AI.
Agree completely, but doesn’t that speak to the problems of crony capitalism more than ML/tech? The path of resistance in those public sector areas against lobbyists & corruption is tougher than simply joining the social/entertainment wave or raising margins for private industry.
Most of the ML & AI advances I’ve seen have come from university/PhD researchers before it pipelines directly into VC-backed companies. There’s not much of a pipeline into altruistic efforts. Some call it the R&D “valley of death”, but it’s a reflection of society’s values.
The way I see it, our major problems are societal and could only be solved by proper governmental policies, but there is too much rich people spending millions to prevent these from happening. Thinking that ML will solve our problems is ignoring the root cause (capitalism).
.@mtraven has a short but cogent argument that anyone worried about "hostile AI" should first be concerned with our current system of industrial capitalism which has its own autonomy and acts independent of human control. http://omniorthogonal.blogspot.com/2013/02/hostile-ai-youre-soaking-in-it.html …
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