Very well articulated. I did a solid amount of head nodding while reading this.
As you appear to be, I’m also becoming concerned about the field trying to “cash in” too early too hard on our existing methods and theories which we know have potentially significant flaws. I don’t doubt that progress can be made by pursuing the current best methods and seeing where they succeed and fail, and I’m very glad that a good portion of the field is doing this. But looking around I don’t see enough people searching for new fundamental theories or methods that better explain how these networks actually do stuff. Too many eggs are falling in the same basket.
I don’t think this is as hard a problem as the ones you find in Physics or Maths. We just need to better incentivise people to have a crack at it, e.g. by starting more varied teams at big labs and by funding people/orgs to pursue non-mainline agendas.
Very well articulated. I did a solid amount of head nodding while reading this.
As you appear to be, I’m also becoming concerned about the field trying to “cash in” too early too hard on our existing methods and theories which we know have potentially significant flaws. I don’t doubt that progress can be made by pursuing the current best methods and seeing where they succeed and fail, and I’m very glad that a good portion of the field is doing this. But looking around I don’t see enough people searching for new fundamental theories or methods that better explain how these networks actually do stuff. Too many eggs are falling in the same basket.
I don’t think this is as hard a problem as the ones you find in Physics or Maths. We just need to better incentivise people to have a crack at it, e.g. by starting more varied teams at big labs and by funding people/orgs to pursue non-mainline agendas.