There’s also the possibility of learning a generative model that can sample 
examples dependent on certain givens.   It opens up the possibility of 
empirical study.  One can generate unseen data that may represent deep 
structure.

From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Jochen Fromm
Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2021 10:39 AM
To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group <[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interview with Jeremy Howard

Deep learning mostly seems to be the good old back-propagation in feedforward 
neural networks which is rediscovered every 10 years by a new generation. Plus 
more data and more servers. The result is reasonable pattern recognition which 
lacks explainability. As Noah Smith said

Deep learning is basically just a computer saying "I can't quite define it, but 
I know it when I see it."
https://twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/1361752362969272321

-J.

-------- Original message --------
From: jon zingale <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>>
Date: 2/24/21 18:13 (GMT+01:00)
To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Interview with Jeremy Howard

I appreciate Jeremy's spit and elbow grease approach to developing his lab, his 
youthful heart/naivety, and the emphasis he places on architecture and 
profiling over analytic bounds. His position mostly focuses on the importance 
of "getting up, getting out, and getting 
something"<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CssC-DY4lO8&ab_channel=OutkastVEVO> 
with respect to AI, though something about his enthusiasm and virtue signaling 
gives me pause. Silicon Valley 2.0 is hyper-obsessed with the ethics of its 
earlier form, and so there remains something disturbing about white men 
continuing the pattern of imperialism under the guise of missionary work, a 
mission to serve the noble savages. This pattern is by no means new and to the 
extent that his desire to help is as authentically quixotic as he presents, it 
can likely be remedied with a little self-reflection.

While I continue to hold out for high-level neural network theories, I do very 
much appreciate the attempts to remove false barriers to entry. One tension I 
feel, when I take a few steps back, is repeated in the very development of the 
web and more generally in the euro-centric story of westward expansion. The 
former conveys the tribulations of a world now burdened with Javascript in 
which we (in the field) scramble to work out what's next (web assembly?) and 
determine the meaningful patterns. The latter is the story of opportunity in 
the wilderness followed by the inevitable harness of law (True Grit). If the 
goal is authenticity wrt distancing ourselves from Silicon Valley 1.0, I wish 
to see authentically new narratives and archetypes.

All that said, I am excited about the work Jeremy and his wife are doing and I 
mostly agree that coding is an essential literacy. --trigger warning-- Even if 
tomorrow the world's computers were to disappear, we would continue to depend 
on this literacy.

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