Robin, the question of whether compact insights exist and whether they are likely to be obtained in reasonable time (and by how large a group, etc) are very different questions and should be considered separately, in order.
Jed, I’ve met Sebastian Thrun, he’s smart but not quite Bayesian-to-the-uttermost-core. (I.e., he once gave an anecdote involving a randomized algorithm and it took me a while to figure out how to derandomize it.) Haven’t met the others, but I agree with you that a whole lot of AI has moved on far ahead from the old days. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is a gorgeous textbook; e.g., they give some idea of what logic is good for and what it’s not. Statistical learning is cool (I’m a Bayesian, what do you expect me to say?) and again the great marker is that often they can say, in an abstract sense, what kind of regularity the algorithm assumes and exploits.
But for some odd reason, a lot of the people working in the field of Artificial General Intelligence—“true AI” startups and projects—still seem to adhere to older ways, and to believe that mysterious algorithms can work… an obvious selection effect once you realize it.
Robin, the question of whether compact insights exist and whether they are likely to be obtained in reasonable time (and by how large a group, etc) are very different questions and should be considered separately, in order.
Jed, I’ve met Sebastian Thrun, he’s smart but not quite Bayesian-to-the-uttermost-core. (I.e., he once gave an anecdote involving a randomized algorithm and it took me a while to figure out how to derandomize it.) Haven’t met the others, but I agree with you that a whole lot of AI has moved on far ahead from the old days. Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach is a gorgeous textbook; e.g., they give some idea of what logic is good for and what it’s not. Statistical learning is cool (I’m a Bayesian, what do you expect me to say?) and again the great marker is that often they can say, in an abstract sense, what kind of regularity the algorithm assumes and exploits.
But for some odd reason, a lot of the people working in the field of Artificial General Intelligence—“true AI” startups and projects—still seem to adhere to older ways, and to believe that mysterious algorithms can work… an obvious selection effect once you realize it.