Four short links: 13 November 2017
Software 2.0, Watson Walkback, Robot Fish, and Smartphone Data
- Software 2.0 (Andrej Karpathy) — A large nimber of programmers of tomorrow do not maintain complex software repositories, write intricate programs, or analyze their running times. They collect, clean, manipulate, label, analyze, and visualize data that feeds neural networks. Supported by Pete Warden: I know this will all sound like more deep learning hype, and if I wasn’t in the position of seeing the process happening every day, I’d find it hard to swallow too, but this is real. Bill Gates is supposed to have said “Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in 10 years,” and this is how I feel about the replacement of traditional software with deep learning. There will be a long ramp-up as knowledge diffuses through the developer community, but in 10 years, I predict most software jobs won’t involve programming. As Andrej memorably puts it, “[deep learning] is better than you”!
- IBM Watson Not Even Close — The interviews suggest that IBM, in its rush to bolster flagging revenue, unleashed a product without fully assessing the challenges of deploying it in hospitals globally. While it has emphatically marketed Watson for cancer care, IBM hasn’t published any scientific papers demonstrating how the technology affects physicians and patients. As a result, its flaws are getting exposed on the front lines of care by doctors and researchers who say that the system, while promising in some respects, remains undeveloped. AI has been drastically overhyped, and there will be more disappointments to come.
- Robot Spy Fish — “The fish accepted the robot into their schools without any problem,” says Bonnet. “And the robot was also able to mimic the fish’s behavior, prompting them to change direction or swim from one room to another.”
- Politics Gets Personal: Effects of Political Partisanship and Advertising on Family Ties — Using smartphone-tracking data and precinct-level voting, we show that politically divided families shortened Thanksgiving dinners by 20-30 minutes following the divisive 2016 election.[…] we estimate 27 million person-hours of cross-partisan Thanksgiving discourse were lost in 2016 to ad-fueled partisan effects Smartphone data is useful data. (via Marginal Revolution)
