[HN Gopher] Why did Google Brain exist? ___________________________________________________________________ Why did Google Brain exist? Author : brilee Score : 312 points Date : 2023-04-26 16:22 UTC (6 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.moderndescartes.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.moderndescartes.com) | khazhoux wrote: | > I sat on it because I wasn't sure of the optics of posting such | an essay while employed by Google Brain. But then Google made my | decision easier by laying me off in January. My severance check | cleared... | | I'm really baffled by how people think it's OK to write public | accounts of their previous ( _and sometime current!_ ) employers' | inner workings. This guy got paid a shitload of money to do work | _and to keep all internal details private, even after he leaves_. | They could not be more clear about this when you join the | company. | | Why do people think it's OK to share like this? This isn't a | whistleblowing situation -- he's just going for internet brownie | points. It's just an attempt to squeeze a bit more personal | benefit out of your (now-ended) employment. | | Contractual/legal issues aside, I think this kind of post shows a | lack of personal integrity (because he _did_ sign a paper | agreeing not to disclose info), and even a betrayal of former | teammates who now have to deal with the fallout. | mrbabbage wrote: | The primary purpose of an NDA is to allow the company to | enforce trade secrets: the existence of the NDA is proof that | the company took steps to maintain the secrets' secrecy. | Nothing in this blog post looks like a trade secret to me; | rather, it's one person's fairly high-level reflections on the | work environment at a particularly high profile lab. | | While he technically may have violated the NDA, it's really | hard for me to see any damage or fallout from this post. It's | gentle, disparages only at the highest levels of abstraction, | doesn't name names, etc. I don't think it makes sense to view | it in a moralistic or personal integrity light. Breach-of- | contract is not a moral wrong, merely a civil one that allows | the counterparty (Google) to get damages if they want. | bubblethink wrote: | > a betrayal of former teammates who now have to deal with the | fallout. | | What fallout is this ? Did you sign a contract with him ? If | you are harmed by it, why don't you seek legal recourse ? Your | entire rant started with some NDA stuff, and in the end you | say, "legal issues aside". This is like the "Having said that" | move from Curb. You start with something, then contradict | yourself completely with "Having said that". If you have a | contractual grievance, seek it. If not, you are grieving on the | internet, just like he is. | brilee wrote: | I've been quite careful not to divulge anything confidential, | and anything that is remotely close to sensitive has publicly | accessible citations. My opinions about Google are tantamount | to discussions about workplace conditions, and it would be very | bad for society if ex-employees were not allowed to discuss | those. | khazhoux wrote: | But all your opinions are informed by your years of TGIFs and | internal emails and discussions and presentations and your | insider perspective. When you talk about promotions, or | internal values and prioritizations, you are leveraging info | gained privately. | | If I'm wrong and nothing in your contract or on-boarding said | you shouldn't talk about internals, then my bad. But I | suspect they were as clear with you as they were with me, | that it's not ok to post anything based on inside info. And | in your opening paragraph you say: | | > As somebody with a _unique perspective_ | | Your unique perspective was your access as an employee. | | > and the unique freedom to share it | | Your unique freedom is that you're done receiving money from | them. But contractually, this doesn't matter. | packetslave wrote: | Why do you care? Unless you work for Google Legal, you're | in no position to scold OP about _anything_ | khazhoux wrote: | I care because I value these Confidentiality commitments, | and I believe that if someone doesn't like them, they | should not sign them to begin with, rather than breaking | them. A company (like any group of people) is allowed to | define the culture and standards required for membership. | | I've worked in extremely secretive companies, and very | open ones. I prefer the open ones. But I still don't say | anything about internals at the secretive ones -- because | that was part of the commitment I made in exchange for | employment. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | From my perspective, in the most bold words I can think | to phrase this: You're betraying the citizens and lawful | residents of your country by not informing them of what | to expect should they accept a job at one of these | companies. Have fun with your 30 pieces of silver | (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thirty_pieces_of_silver ). | | > and I believe that if someone doesn't like them, they | should not sign them to begin with, rather than breaking | them. | | Do you, at least, believe that confidentiality agreements | should be broken if it is to make the police or public | aware of a crime? How about a civil infraction, such as a | hostile working environment? | khazhoux wrote: | > Do you, at least, believe that confidentiality | agreements should be broken if it is to make the police | or public aware of a crime? How about a civil infraction, | such as a hostile working environment? | | Absolutely. I referenced whistleblowing in my original | post above. This isn't a such a case. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Does this apply to people who infiltrate what they | believe are corrupt companies with the expectation of | digging up dirt, and thus sign the confidentiality | agreements with the expectation of violating them? | | Does this apply to moral wrongs, which are technically | legal (e.g. cruel conditions at animal farms)? | burningion wrote: | It's obvious you care about the people you worked with, and | the potential for what you were building. From my perspective | you wrote this for the people who couldn't. | | Ignore this person. | crazygringo wrote: | How do you know he was paid to keep all internal details | private after he leaves? Do you have knowledge of the | employment contract, can you share the relevant language with | us? | | All he says is his concern about "optics", which has nothing to | do with contract. | | If Google has a problem with his post, they can go after him, | but that's an issue between Google and him, not with you or me | or the rest of the internet. | | I'm definitely struggling to see what any of this has to do | with personal integrity, betrayal, or squeezing personal | benefit. To the contrary, it simply seems informative and he's | sharing knowledge just to be helpful. Unless I've missed | something, I don't see anything revealed that would harm Google | or his former teammates here. No leaks of what's coming down | the pipeline, no scandals, nothing of the sort. | | People are allowed to share opinions of their previous | employment and generally describe the broad outlines of their | work and where they worked. This isn't a situation of working | for the CIA with top-secret clearance. | khazhoux wrote: | > Do you have knowledge of the employment contract, can you | share the relevant language with us? | | I actually could dig up my own contract from years ago (ugh, | the effort though) but Confidentiality clause is in there, | and it was made clear during on-boarding what is expected | from employees: don't share any internal info unless you're | an authorized company representative. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | General working conditions are not "internal info"; it is | beneficial to society to discuss working conditions (which | can be pretty detailed), and is thus a protected activity | under various laws. Nothing in any contract can obviate | this lawful right (and, to some, a basic duty of | citizenship, since the country is more important than any | single company within the country). At best contracts can | highlight what _is_ privileged information that there is a | duty to keep secret. | iamdamian wrote: | Now you have me curious. Which laws, specifically? | anonymouskimmer wrote: | The big one in the USA is the National Labor Relations | Act, but this generally applies to group action. However, | such group action can be literally publically posting | about a job's work conditions. | | Here's a list of recent state laws in Washington, Oregon, | and Maine, which prohibition certain kinds of NDAs | (oriented toward unlawful activity, not general speech | rights): https://www.foley.com/en/insights/publications/2 | 022/07/sever... | | Contracts are required to be 'reasonable' for both | parties. This puts limits on the ability to constrain in | a contract. I don't know how much this reasonableness | standard is statutory or judicial. | | For public-sector employees there's some protection under | the first amendment. | https://www.workplacefairness.org/retaliation-public- | employe... | | And in Connecticut this free speech protection transfers | to private-sector employees too: https://law.justia.com/c | odes/connecticut/2005/title31/sec31-... | | https://www.natlawreview.com/article/free-speech-and- | express... | | https://www.pullcom.com/working-together/there-are- | limits-to... > there is no statutory protection if the | employee was only complaining about personal matters, | such as the terms or conditions of employment. The | employee has to show that he was commenting on a matter | of public concern, rather than attempting to resolve a | private dispute with the employer. | vore wrote: | Broadly, section 7 of the NLRA, but it is not spelled out | in the text of the act. Instead, Quicken Loans, Inc. v. | NLRB established the precedent that discussing working | conditions is not a violation of confidentiality: https:/ | /www.lexisnexis.com/community/casebrief/p/casebrief-q... | colonwqbang wrote: | So only people who never worked at Google are allowed to | criticse Google? | confounded wrote: | You should write to to the author, to scold them directly! | [deleted] | refulgentis wrote: | This is a hopelessly naive misunderstanding framed as obvious | disloyalty, I want to buy calls on your career in middle | management. | seizethecheese wrote: | You mean puts? | refulgentis wrote: | nah calls, very in line with what _sounds_ good even when | naive and misinformed | q845712 wrote: | I read the article and thought he did a fine job of not | spilling too many secrets - I'm curious what you thought he | said that crossed the line? | | I'm not personally aware of signing something that says "I'll | keep all internal details private" though I agree I'd be highly | unlikely to refer to anyone below the SVP level by name -- but | I think that's exactly what OP did? | khazhoux wrote: | True, this wasn't the most egregious. But the principle still | applies. He said himself he held this back until his final | check cleared. | rurp wrote: | A large company acting out spite towards a former employee | has happened more than a couple times. Minimizing that risk | seems entirely reasonable. | | As others have said, I really don't see anything that's | especially private in the article. The author wrote in | pretty general terms. | ynx wrote: | Because a promise that imprisons knowledge indefinitely has no | integrity. To me, it's clear that it is absolutely in the | public interest to - perhaps not go out of one's way to spread, | but at least feel free to - explain the conditions and inner | workings of large and impactful organizations. | | We're all thinkers who are asked to apply our minds in exchange | for money, not slaves whose brain is leased to or owned by our | employers for the duration of our tenure. | | Even when asked to keep things secret, there's still no way for | a company to own every last vestige of knowledge or | understanding retained in our minds, and there's _still_ an | overwhelming public interest in building on and preserving | knowledge, to the point that, in my opinion, nearly any piece | of human knowledge short of trade secrets should _eventually_ | be owned by humanity as a whole. (and there 's even some moral | arguments to be made about some trade secrets, but that's a | much deeper discussion) | | I personally find that people who are overly concerned with | secrecy view their integrity from the lens of their employer, | but not at a human interest level. To be clear, there are still | times for secrecy or the security or integrity of information | to be respected, but it's nuanced and generally narrower than | people expect. | protastus wrote: | I've never worked at Google Brain, but I've been a research | manager in tech for a decade, and nothing here seems surprising | to me. It discusses the archetype of the well funded industry | lab that is too academic and ultimately winds down. | | The post makes sensible but generic statements based on the | view of an IC. It tries to work back from the conclusion | (Google struggles to move academic research into product) and | produces plausible but hardly definitive explanations, with no | ranking, primarily because there's no discussion of the | thinking, actions and promises made at the executive level that | kept the lab funded for all these years. | brilee wrote: | You're right that I don't know enough as an IC to comment on | the thinking, actions, and promises at the exec level that | kept Brain funded. But even if I did, to the GP's point, I | would not talk about that part at all. | | I'm curious about your perspective as a research manager in | tech - would you be willing to chat privately? | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > But even if I did, to the GP's point, I would not talk | about that part at all. | | Even if you were one of said executives, who was moving to | a higher-level job at another company, and the company was | interviewing you as to the reasoning behind decisions made | in your previous job? | TaylorAlexander wrote: | What did he sign? And what are the relevant laws? | | You have to be careful thinking you owe your employer | everything they would wish to have. Disclosing the inner | workings is extremely helpful to people trying to figure out | where to work, and how their current employer compares to | others. I got a job at Google X Robotics in 2017 in large part | because the place was so secret and I always wanted to know | what happened there. It was quite an interesting experience, | but I do wonder how I would have felt if someone like me | working there had written something like this before I made the | decision. | burtonator wrote: | That's not really what's happening here I think. | | I think he's just not sure what's ok or not ok to write about. | Nothing he wrote here was problematic. No secrets and just sort | of mild criticism. | jrochkind1 wrote: | > he's just going for internet brownie points. It's just an | attempt to squeeze a bit more personal benefit out of your | (now-ended) employment. | | So, many researcher types (and not only them, but also | including many of us) are motivated by -- find it personally | rewarding at a psychological level -- to share their thoughts | in a dialog with a community. They just find this to be an | enjoyable thing to do that makes them feel like they are a | valuable member of society contributing to a general | collaborative practice of knowledge-creation. | | I hope it doesn't feel like I'm explaining the obvious; but it | occurs to me that to ask the question the way you did, this is | probably _not_ a motivation you have, not something you find | personally rewarding. Which is fine, we all are driven by | different things. | | But I don't think it's quite the same thing as "internet | brownie points" -- while if you are especially good at it, you | will gain respect and admiration, which you will probably | appreciate it -- you aren't thinking "if I share my insight | gained working at Google, then maybe more people will think I'm | cool," you're just thinking that it's a natural urge to share | your insight and get feedback on it, because that itself is | something enjoyable and gives you a sense of purpose. | | Which is to say, i don't think it's exactly a motivation for | "personal benefit" either, except in the sense that doing | things you enjoy and find rewarding are a "personal benefit", | that having a sense of purpose is a "personal benefit", sure. | | I'm aware that not everyone works this way. I'm aware that some | people on HN seem to be motivated primarily by maximizing | income, for instance. That, or some other orientation, may lead | to thinking that one should never share anything at all | publicly about one's job, because it can only hurt and never | help whatever one's goals are (maximizing income or what have | you). | | (Although... here you are commenting on HN; why? For internet | brownie points?) | | But that is not generally how academic/researcher types are | oriented. | | I think it's a sad thing if it becomes commonplace to think | that there's something _wrong_ with people who find purpose and | meaning in sharing their insights in dialog with a community. | choppaface wrote: | I'm really baffled by how many people think a job is more than | a job and there's some ownership over the employee's critical | thinking capabilities during the job and after it ends. | | While I agree the OP is "going for internet brownie points" (or | probably a bit butthurt from being laid off from a certifiably | top-5 cushiest job in the United States) the article doesn't | include anything even remotely trade secret and is | predominantly opinion. It's really totally fine to blog about | how you feel about your employer. There are certainly risks, | but a company has to pay extra if they actually don't want you | to blog at all (or they have to be extremely litigious). | | There's a strong precedent of employer-employee loyalty that | has substantially been set due to pre-internet information | disparities between the two. In the past year or so, there have | been some pretty unprecedented layoffs (e.g. Google lays off | thousands and then does billions of stock buybacks ...)... The | employer-employee relationship needs to evolve. | khazhoux wrote: | > a company has to pay extra | | Part of my problem is that Google (and similar companies) are | _already_ paying insane (in the best way possible) amounts of | money, and when you sign the agreement to take said money, | you explicitly promise you won 't talk about company | internals. | | To me this is quite simple: if you accept what winds up being | millions of dollars in cash+equity, and you give your word | that you'll keep your mouth shut as one of the conditions for | that pile of money... then you shut keep your mouth shut. | choppaface wrote: | You keep your mouth shut about _material property_ of | Google. E.g. don 't post code, and probably don't give | details about code that hasn't been made public. Sure, this | area is not clear and can also depend on one's internal | position in the company, but it's important to separate | moral hazard from legal hazard. | | As far as one's _opinions_ go, and in particular how the | company made you _feel_ , that's not paid for. A severance | agreement might outline some things, but again that's legal | hazard and not moral hazard. There are certainly some execs | and managers who will only want to work with really, really | loyal people, who throw in a lot more for the money. And | some execs will pay a lot more for that... e.g. look at how | much Tesla spends on employee litigation. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Should you also not use any skills you gained at your | previous employer at your new employer? Not to mention any | techniques you learned about that may help your current | employer? Would doing so be "talking about company | internals"? | | So how do you ever get a better job than entry level, if | you aren't willing to use the knowledge you gained at prior | jobs in new jobs? | epolanski wrote: | I would never trust or hire people that wash their laundry | publicly like this. | gscott wrote: | The check cleared! | ShamelessC wrote: | That's a very optimistic take on how new generations perceive | the ethics surrounding confidentiality. Are you really | _baffled_ by this? I understand that it's a common position, | but it's a position that is so clearly tainted by the conflicts | of interest between employer and employee. And a keen awareness | of those conflicting interests _only_ serves to better an | employee's ability to serve themselves best in a capitalist | economy. | | I'm not saying you are wrong per se. But if you don't see why | employees are willing to act in this way, you don't see how | employees feel about being trapped in a system where no matter | how much you are paid - you are ultimately making someone else | more. | khazhoux wrote: | I totally get why people act this way. Because it's Very | Important That Everyone Knows What I Think. | | But there is no inequity or conflict of interest here. None | of that about being trapped in a capitalist economy is to the | point here. He has probably a couple million dollars in his | bank account that wasn't there before, and the deal was to | not talk publicly about internals (which includes promotions | process, internal motivations and decision-making, etc). | packetslave wrote: | Yet for some reason OP and everyone here are supposed to | care what YOU think? | khazhoux wrote: | I'm not suggesting people shouldn't post thoughts and | opinions. This is about whether a personal desire to | self-express, should override their explicit prior | commitment/promise not to do so. | pessimizer wrote: | You don't think there's any inequity between somebody with | a couple million in the bank and google, or any conflict of | interest between my desire to talk about my work and my | employer's desire that I do not? Your position is valid | enough without being willfully obtuse. | khazhoux wrote: | Once you agree to not talk about it (as part of the | employment terms), then there is zero conflict of | interest. | | "Yes, I agree to not share internal info, in exchange for | this money. And by the way, I _will_ still share internal | info, because inequity. " | bbor wrote: | You're thinking about employment contracts like an | abstract economic exchange between two free parties, | which is very micro. Try thinking about it instead like a | bargain with the (macro) devil. | | In other words, consider someone's perspective who has | society split into two camps: the people who do all the | work, and the corrupt elite that make their living | through theft and oppression. In such a world, signing a | contract with an employer (i.e. capitalist i.e. elite) is | more of a practical step than a sacrosanct bond. There's | a level of "what's reasonable" and "what legally | enforceable" beyond the basic "never break a promise" | level you're working at, IMO. | | No ones endorsing publishing trade secrets randomly, but | you're treating all disclosures like they're equivalent. | jll29 wrote: | I checked with some Google friends who told me their contract | even makes it illegal to tell anyone that they work for Google | (no joke). | | One side is what's in the papers you signed and the other side | is to what extent the terms can be enforced. But you have a | point in that it would be good professional practice to wait | for a decade before disclosing internals especially when names | of people are dropped... | [deleted] | [deleted] | simonster wrote: | I work for Google Brain. I remember meeting Brian at a conference | and I have nothing but good things to say about him. That said, I | think Brian is underestimating the extent to which the | Brain/DeepMind merger is happening because it's what researchers | want. Many of us have a strong sense that the future of ML | involves models built by large teams in industry environments. My | impression is that the goal of the merger is to create a better, | more coordinated environment for that kind of research. | gowld wrote: | The goal of the merger is for execs to look like they are doing | something to drive progress. Actual progress comes from the | researchers and developers. | anonylizard wrote: | Well, where exactly is this progress? Where is Google's | answer to GPT-4? Why weren't the 'researchers and developers' | making a GPT-4 equivalent? | | Turns out you sometimes you need a top down, centralised | vision to execute on projects. When the goal is undefined, | you can allow researchers to run free and explore, now its | full on wartime, with clear goals (make GPT-5,6,7....). | oofbey wrote: | Google is fundamentally allergic to top-down management. | Most googlers will reject any attempt to be told what to do | as wrong, because lots of IC's voting with their feet are | smarter than any (google) exec at figuring out what to do. | | Last time Google got spooked by a competitor was Facebook, | and they built Google Plus in response. We all know that | was an utter failure. Googlers could escape that one with | their egos in tact because winning in "social" is just some | UX junk, not hard-core engineering like ML. | | It's gonna be super hard for them to come to grips with the | fact that they are way behind on something that they should | be good at. Plan for lots of cognitive dissonance ahead. | choppaface wrote: | > Neither side "won" this merger. I think both Brain and DeepMind | lose. I expect to see many project cancellations, project | mergers, and reallocations of headcount over the next few months, | as well as attrition. | | This merger will be a big test for Sundar, who has openly | admitted years ago to there being major trust issues [1]. Can | Sundar maintain the perspective of being the alpha company while | bleeding a ton of talent that doesn't actively contribute to tech | dominance? Or will he piss off the wrong people internally? It's | OK to have a Google Plus / Stadia failure if the team really | wanted to do the project. If the team does _not_ want to work | together though, and they fail, then Sundar's request that the | orgs work together to save the company is going to get totally | ignored in the finger-pointing. | | [1] https://www.axios.com/2019/10/26/google-trust-employee- | immig... . | ergocoder wrote: | The merger will fail. | | If 5000 people are not enough to do things, 10000 people will | unlikely change that. | vl wrote: | >PyTorch/Nvidia GPUs easily overtaking TensorFlow/Google TPUs. | | TF lost to PyTorch, and this is Google's fault - TF APIs are both | insane and badly documented. | | But nothing comes close to performance of Google's TPU exaflop | mega-clusters. Nvidia is not even in the same ballpark. | gillesjacobs wrote: | I have used both but ended up dropping TF for PyTorch after | 2018. Mainly it was the larger PyTorch ecosystem in my field | (NLP) and clear API design and documentation that did it for | me. | | However, TF was still a valid contender and it was not clearcut | back in 2016-17 which framework was better. | jdlyga wrote: | I can speak from experience on this. Getting started with | TensorFlow was very complicated with sparse documentation, so | we dropped the idea of using it. | vl wrote: | I had to use TF when I worked at G, when I left I immediately | started to use PyTorch and never looked back. | aix1 wrote: | Even internally at Google/DeepMind, all the cool kids have | long moved to JAX. | dekhn wrote: | Once the ads model runs on Jax instead of TF, it's | curtains for TF. | joseph_grobbles wrote: | [dead] | belval wrote: | There is a first mover handicap there though. TF1.0 included a | bunch of things that were harder to understand like | tf.Session(). PyTorch was inspired from the good parts and "we | will eager-everything". Internally I'm sure there was a lot of | debate in the TF team that culminated with TF2.0, but by that | time the damage was done and people saw PyTorch as easier. | bitL wrote: | I think the main problem was debugging tensors on the fly, | impossible with TF/Keras, but completely natural to PyTorch. | Most researchers needed to sequentially observe what is going | on in tensors (histograms etc.) and even doing backprop for | their newly constructed layers by hand and that was difficult | with TF. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | Nope, Pytorch was inspired by the Lua version of Torch which | well predates Tensor flow. To be fair, basically every other | DL framework made the same mistake though. | | Also, tensorflow was a total nightmare to install while | Pytorch was pretty straightforward, which definitely | shouldn't be discounted. | andyjohnson0 wrote: | > Also, tensorflow was a total nightmare to install while | Pytorch was pretty straightforward, which definitely | shouldn't be discounted. | | I think this is a very important point, and I remember | sweating blood trying to build a standalone tf environment | (admittedly on windows) in the past. I'm impressed by how | much simpler and smoother the process has recently become. | | I do prefer Keras to Pytorch though - but thats just me | tdullien wrote: | TF in its first version was stellarly misdesigned. It was | infuriatingly difficult to use, particularly if you were of the | "I just want to write code and have it autodiffed + SGDed" | school, I found it crazy to use Python to manually construct a | computational graph... | oofbey wrote: | TF1 was pretty rough to use, but beat the pants off Theano | for usability, which was really the best thing going before | it. Sure it was slow as dirt ("tensorslow") even though the | awkward design was justified on being able to make it fast. | But it was by far the best thing going for a long time. | | Google really killed TF with the transition to TF2. Backwards | incompatible everything? This only makes sense if you live in | a giant monorepo with tools that rewrite everybody's code | whenever you change an interface. (e.g. inside google). On | the outside it took TF's biggest asset and turned it into a | liability. Every library, blog post, stackoverflow post, etc | talking about TF was now wrong. So anybody trying to figure | out how to get started or build something was forced into | confusion. Not sure about this, but I suspect it's Chollet's | fault. | dekhn wrote: | You need _something_ to construct a graph. Why not pick a | well-known language already used in scientific computing and | stats /data science? The other options are: pick a lesser | known language (lua, julia) or a language not traditionally | used for scientific computing (php, ruby), or a compiled | language most researchers don't know (C++), or a raw config | file format (which you would then use code to generate). | | What's really crazy is using Pure, Idiomatic Python which is | then Traced to generate a graph (what Jax does). I want my | model definitions to be declarative, not implict in the code. | whymauri wrote: | Python is the least of my concerns with Tensorflow... | especially TF 1.0. What a mess it was, and kinda still is. | 1024core wrote: | There's a reason why the TL behind TF (Rajat Monga) got | booted out. | piecerough wrote: | What's this based on? | 1024core wrote: | Check Rajat Monga's LinkedIn profile. He's no longer with | Google. | metadat wrote: | What's the meaning of _SDG_ in this context? | | Edit: | | Hypothesis: Stochastic Gradient Descent | ragebol wrote: | Parent typed SGD, which means Stochastic Gradient Descent. | An optimization method. | asdfman123 wrote: | My theory is that broadly, tech learned not to act like Microsoft | in the 90s -- closed off, anti-competitive, unpopular -- but | swung too far in the opposite direction. | | Google has been basically giving away technology for free, which | was easy because of all the easy money. It's good for reputation | and attracting the best talent. That is, until a competitor | starts to threaten to overtake you with the technology you gave | them (ChatGPT based on LLM research, Edge based on Chromium, | etc.). | potatolicious wrote: | Ehh, I mildly disagree. I'm not entirely bought-in on the | notion that giving one's technical innovations for free is | obviously the right move, but I don't think it's why the | company is in trouble. | | Chrome is experiencing unprecedented competition because it | faltered on the product. Chrome went from synonymous with fast- | and-snappy to synonymous with slow-and-bloated. | | Likewise Google invented transformers - but the sin isn't | giving it away, it's failing to exercise the technology itself | in a compelling way. At any moment in time Google could have | released ChatGPT (or some variation thereof), but they didn't. | | I've made this point before - but Google's problems have little | to do with how it's pursuing fundamental research, but | everything to do with how it pursues its products. The failure | to apply fundamental innovations that happened within its own | halls is organizational. | return_to_monke wrote: | > Chrome is experiencing unprecedented competition | | From where? 65% globally use Chrome (https://en.m.wikipedia.o | rg/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers). | | The only widespread competition is from Safari and FF, both | of which have been around longer than it. | asdfman123 wrote: | Well, Google could have easily not have shared its | technology. | | However, the bloat problem you've described are difficult | problems to solve, and are to some degree endemic to large | businesses with established products. | potatolicious wrote: | > _" Well, Google could have easily not have shared its | technology."_ | | Sure, but the idea is that if they didn't share their | technology, they'd still be in the same spot: they would | have invented transformers and _still_ not shipped major | products around it. | | Sure maybe OpenAI won't exist, but competitors will find | other ways to compete. They always do. | | So at best they are _very very slightly_ better off than | the alternative, but being secretive IMO wouldn 't have | been a major change to their market position. | | Meanwhile, if Google was better at productizing its | research, it matters relatively little what they give away. | They would be first to market with best-in-class products, | the fact that there would be a litany of clones would be a | minor annoyance at best. | asdfman123 wrote: | True, but they only feel the fire now, and you can tell | they're rapidly trying to productionalize stuff like | you've described. It will take time though. | | They were too risk averse before. | dr_dshiv wrote: | Lots of great insight. Here's one: | | "Given the long timelines of a PhD program, the vast majority of | early ML researchers were self-taught crossovers from other | fields. This created the conditions for excellent | interdisciplinary work to happen. This transitional anomaly is | unfortunately mistaken by most people to be an inherent property | of machine learning to upturn existing fields. It is not. | | Today, the vast majority of new ML researcher hires are freshly | minted PhDs, who have only ever studied problems from the ML | point of view. I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a | ML PhD to learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML." | asciimov wrote: | > "[...] I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a ML | PhD to learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML." | | That's good ol' academic gatekeeping for ya, available wherever | PhD's are found. | mattkrause wrote: | There's more to it than that. | | CS is unusually easy to learn on your own. You can mess | around, build intuition, and check your progress---all on | your own and in your pyjamas. It's easy to roll things back | if you make a mistake, and hard to do lasting damage. There | are tons of useful resources, often freely available. Thus, | you can get to an intermediate level quickly and cheaply. | | Wet-lab fields have none of that. Hands-on experience and | mentorship is hard for beginners to get outside of school. | There are a few introductory things online, but what's the | Andrew Ng MOOC for pchem? | knorker wrote: | > I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a ML PhD to | learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML. | | Haha, I've seen that for so many topics. "It's much easier for | someone used to circuit switched phone networks to learn IP | than the other way around", says the person who started with | circuit switched. | | I just thought "dude, you're literally the worst at IP | networking that I've ever met. Your misunderstandings are dug | into everything I've seen you do with IP". | kergonath wrote: | > I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a ML PhD to | learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML | | I can confirm. We regularly look for people to write some | computational physics code, and recently for people using ML to | solve solid state physics problems. It's way easier to bring a | good physicist or chemist to a decent CS level (either ML or | HPC) than the other way around. | hgsgm wrote: | This is because software developers are too good at | automation themselves out of a job. | MichaelZuo wrote: | It's also because nobody goes to get a phd in solid state | physics for the money or career prospects, at least not in | the last decade. So it's a small and self selected group. | kergonath wrote: | We love automation. There is just too much to do, and the | field is unbounded. More automation means more papers and | more interesting science. | epolanski wrote: | It's the same reason analysts come from math rather than | economy degrees. | | You can teach a mathematician what he needs to know about | finance, you can hardly do the opposite. | dekhn wrote: | As somebody who has crossed the line between ML and chemistry | many times, I would love to see: more ML researchers who know | chemistry, more chemistry researchers who know ML, and best of | all, fully cross-disciplinary researchers who are both masters | of chemistry and ML, as those are the ones who move the field | farthest, fastest. | whymauri wrote: | You could probably fit all the people who fit the last | criteria in the same room (chemistry side is probably the | bottleneck, especially drugs which is a effectively a | specialization). | quickthrower2 wrote: | Society is not structured to encourage this. Getting a job | sooner is more lucrative. Any breakthough you make having | studied for a couple of decades is property of a corporation | not you. | pama wrote: | Present. I think there exist many of us. Chemistry is a very | wide field though, so not sure if organic synthesis vs | theoretical chemistry vs physical chemistry vs biochemistry | will end up more useful to help tackle drug discovery | problems or other chemistry applications. Same with ML I | suppose; even though the specialties are less concrete | nowadays, the breadth of publications has far exceeded the | breadth of modern chemistry. | michaelrpeskin wrote: | obligatory XKCD: https://xkcd.com/793/ | fknorangesite wrote: | Similarly: https://www.smbc-comics.com/comic/2012-03-21 | javajosh wrote: | That's a great xkcd, but there are 2 upsides to this arrogant | approach. First, arrogance is a nerd-snipe maximizer. Second, | there is a small chance you're absolutely right, and you've | just obviated a whole field from first principles. It doesn't | happen often, but when it does happen and there is no clout | like "emporer's new clothes" clout. | | EDIT: The downside, of course, is that you appear arrogant, | and people won't like you. This can hurt your reputation | because it is apparently anti-social behavior on several | levels. I think its fair to call it a little bit of an | intellectual punk rock move that is probably better left to | the young. It's an interesting emotional anchor to mapping a | new field, though. | jojosbuddy wrote: | Not laughing! /s (physicist here) | | Actually most applied physicists like myself go down that | path cause we're pretty efficient, lazy folk & skip through | as fast as possible--I call it the principle of maximum | laziness. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | > Second, there is a small chance you're absolutely right, | and you've just obviated a whole field from first | principles. | | Mostly when I read about things like this happening, it's | happening to a formerly intractable problem in mathematics. | Do you have examples outside of math? | passer_byer wrote: | Alfred Wegener as the initial author on the theory of | plate tectonics comes to mind. He was a trained | meteorologist who observed the similarities between | geological formations between the South American east | coast and African west coast. He was lucky, in that his | father in-law was a prominent geologist and helped him | defend this thesis. | anonymouskimmer wrote: | Oh yeah, revolutionary insights are very important for | the advancement of knowledge and the elimination of wrong | ideas. But as you wrote, this was the work of a thesis, | not a random commenter from another field. | CogitoCogito wrote: | https://xkcd.com/1831/ | qumpis wrote: | I'm yet to see an ML PhD be required to learn chemistry to a | similar extent that chemists would need to doing ML (especially | at research level) | kevviiinn wrote: | That's because application and research are quite different. | If one does a PhD in ML they learn how to research ML. | Someone with a PhD in chemistry learns how to research | chemistry, they only need to apply ML to that research | selimthegrim wrote: | Well I think the issue is more of if you're Genentech and | you need ML people and can't afford to pay them you're | probably better off retraining chemistry PhDs. | kgwgk wrote: | What if they don't need "ML people"? Computational | biology has been a thing for a while. | selimthegrim wrote: | Well they had a whole suite of presentations at NeurIPS | that suggests they hired a bunch. | antipaul wrote: | https://www.gene.com/scientists/our-scientists/prescient- | des... | kgwgk wrote: | They could afford them then... | kevviiinn wrote: | I think you missed my point. Genentech, AFAIK, was not | doing research on machine learning as in the principles | of how machine learning works and how to make it better. | They do biotech research which uses applied machine | learning. You don't need a PhD in ML to apply things that | are already known | cmavvv wrote: | As a PhD student working on core ML methods with | applications in chemistry, I second this. During my PhD, | I read very few papers by chemists that were exciting | from a ML perspective. Some work very well, but the | chemists don't even seem to always understand why they | made the right choice for a specific problem. | | I don't claim that the opposite is easy either. Chemistry | is really difficult, and I understand very little. | gowld wrote: | You can get an ML PhD doing applied ML. | dekhn wrote: | Genentech has several ML groups that do mostly applied | work, but some do fairly deep research into the model | design itself, rather than just applying off-the-shelf | systems. For example, they acquired Prescient Design | which builds fairly sophisticated protein models (https:/ | /nips.cc/Conferences/2022/ScheduleMultitrack?event=59...) | and one of the coauthors is the head of Genentech | Research (which itself is very similar to Google | Research/Brain/DeepMind), and came from the Broad | Institute having done ML for decades ('before it was | cool'). | | They have a few other groups as well (https://nips.cc/Con | ferences/2022/ScheduleMultitrack?event=60... and https:// | neurips.cc/Conferences/2022/ScheduleMultitrack?event... | and https://neurips.cc/Conferences/2022/ScheduleMultitrac | k?event...). | | I can't say I know anybody there who is doing what I | would describe as truly pure research into ML; it's not | in the DNA of the company (so to speak) to do that. | ghaff wrote: | Back when O'Reilly was still hosting events (sigh), at one | of their AI conferences, someone from Google gave a talk | about differences between research/academic AI and applied | AI. I think she had a PhD in the field herself but | basically she made the argument that someone who is just | looking to more or less apply existing tools to business or | other problems mostly doesn't need a lot of the math-heavy | theory you'll get in a PhD program. You do need to | understand limitations etc. of tools and techniques. But | that's different from the kind of novel investigation | that's needed to get a PhD. | frozenport wrote: | >>math-heavy theory you'll get in a PhD program | | Lol. With the exception of niche groups in compressed | sensing, math doesn't get too hard. Furthermore, ML isn't | math driven in the sense people are trying things and | somebody tries to come up with the explanation after the | fact. | SkyBelow wrote: | >I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a ML PhD to | learn chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML. | | Perhaps this is selection bias. Among all the chemists, the | ones who will dabble in ML will likely be the chemists with the | highest ML related aptitude. In contrast, a ML expert on a | chemist project is more likely not being internally driven to | explore it but instead has been assigned the work, which means | that there is less bias in selection and thus they have less | chemistry aptitude. | ternaus wrote: | Loved this argument as well. | | With respect to more mature research fields the entry point to | ML is much lower. | | Hence I always recommended people to have major in Physics, | Chemistry, Biology etc but look for projects in these fields | that could benefit in ML (I have a number of them about | Physics). | | So that argument was not novel. | | But the fact that pure ML PhDs will have significantly lower | multidisciplinary knowledge is a good one. It could be | compensated by the fact that ML is growing fast and all kinds | of people join the ride, but still. | kenjackson wrote: | Chemistry is a centuries old discipline, that people study | undergrad a full four years before getting a PhD in the field | of chemistry. | | ML is a, practically speaking, 15 year old field that PhDs | often begin to study after a couple of AI courses in undergrade | and a specific track in grad school (while they study other | parts of CS as part of their early graduate CS work). | | There's just way less context in ML than Chemistry. | zgin4679 wrote: | It thinks, therefore it did. | rossdavidh wrote: | So if it doesn't exist now, that means it didn't think? | ironman1478 wrote: | "I've seen repeatedly that it's much harder for a ML PhD to learn | chemistry than for a chemist to learn ML. (This may be | survivorship bias; the only chemists I encounter are those that | have successfully learned ML, whereas I see ML researchers | attempt and fail to learn chemistry all the time.)" | | This is something that rings really true to me. I work in imaging | and it's just very clear that people in ML don't want to learn | how things actually work and just want to throw a model at it | (this is a generalization obviously, but it's more often than not | the case). It only gets you 80% there, which is fine usually, but | not fine when the details are make or break for a company. | Unfortunately that last 20% requires understanding of the domain | and people just don't like digging into a topic to actually | understanding things. | drakenot wrote: | This seems to kind of be the opposite opinion of The Bitter | Lesson[0]. | | [0] http://www.incompleteideas.net/IncIdeas/BitterLesson.html | DavidSJ wrote: | > ... the publication of key research like LSTMs in 2014 ... | | Minor nitpick, but LSTMs date to 1997 and were not invented by | Google. [1] | | [1] Hochreiter and Schmidhuber (1997). Long short-term memory. | https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/6795963 | Scea91 wrote: | Seems more than a nitpick to me. I find the essay interesting | but this line raised some distrust in me. How can someone have | these deep insights into Google's ML strategy and the evolution | of the field and simultaneously think LSTMs were invented by | Google in 2014? | brilee wrote: | sorry, I had a mind fart. I was thinking of seq2seq | https://research.google/pubs/pub43155/ | | Pushing the fix now... | DavidSJ wrote: | seq2seq was indeed a big deal. | jll29 wrote: | You're lucky you could push a fix before Schmidhuber [1] | noticed! ;) | | [1] https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.11279 | logicchains wrote: | >How can someone have these deep insights into Google's ML | strategy and the evolution of the field and simultaneously | think LSTMs were invented by Google in 2014? | | It may not have been accidental; there's a deliberate | movement among some people in the ML community to deny Jurgen | Schmidhuber credit for inventing LSTMs and GANs. | seatsniffer wrote: | That's something I hadn't heard about. Is there any | particular reason for this? | nighthawk454 wrote: | It's become somewhat of a meme, where Schmidhuber | seemingly tries to claim credit for nearly everything. I | _think_ it's because he published ideas back in the 90s | or so that weren't fully executable/realized at the time, | and later people figured out how to actually flesh them | out do it, and supposedly didn't cite him | appropriately/enough. Often the ideas weren't exactly the | same - but rather he claims they're derivatives of the | concept he was going for. | | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%BCrgen_Schmidhuber#Cre | dit... | seatsniffer wrote: | Thanks for taking the time to explain. I'll check out the | link also. | jayzalowitz wrote: | nitpick Cockroach was built by the team that built spanner. So | your phrasing is off there. | fizwhiz wrote: | nit: Cockroach was founded by a Xoogler but there's no public | evidence that they were on the Spanner team at any point. | dekhn wrote: | because once Jeff Dean had solved Google's maslow problems | (scaling web search, making ads profitable, developing high | performance machine learning systems) he wanted to return to | doing academic-style research, but with the benefit of Google's | technical and monetary resources, and not part of X, which never | produces anything of long-term value. I know for sure he wanted | to make an impact in medical AI and felt that being part of a | research org would make that easier/more possible than if he was | on a product team. | dgacmu wrote: | I generally agree with this though with some tweaks. I think | Jeff wanted to do something that he thought was both awesome | (he's liked neural networks for a long time - his undergrad | thesis was on them) and likely to have long-term major impact | for Google, and he was able to justify the Awesome Thing by | identifying a way for it to have significant potential revenue | impact for Google via improvements to ad revenue, as well as | significant potential "unknown huge transformative | possibilities" benefits. But I do suspect that you're right | that the heart of it was "Jeff was really passionate about this | thing". | | Of course, this starts to get at different versions of the | question: Why did Google Brain exist in 2012 as a scrappy team | of builders, and why did Brain exist in 2019 as a mega- | powerhouse of AI research? I think you and I are talking about | the former question, and TFA may be focusing more on the second | part of the question. | | [I was randomly affiliated with Brain from 2015-2019 but wasn't | there in the early days] | dekhn wrote: | It grew from the scrappy group to the mega-powerhouse by | combining a number of things: being the right place at the | right time with the right resources and people. They had a | great cachet- I was working hard to join Brain in 2012 | because it seemed like they were one of the few groups who | had access to the necessary CPU and data sets and mental | approaches that would transform machine learning. And at that | time, they used that cachet to hire a bunch of up and coming | researchers (many of them Hinton's students or in his sphere) | and wrote up some pretty great papers. | | Many people outside of Brain were researchers working on | boring other projects who transferred in, bringing their | internal experience in software development and deployment, | which helped a lot on the infra side. | leoh wrote: | Waymo? | dekhn wrote: | waymo hasn't produced anything of long-term value yet. And | everything about it that worked well wasn't due to Google X | ra7 wrote: | Can you expand why being part of Google X hinders a team? I | believe Waymo "graduated" from Google X to its own entity. | dekhn wrote: | X exists as a press-release generation system, not as a | real technology creation system. They onboard many | impractical projects that are either copies of something | being done already in industry ("but with more Google and | ML!") or doesn't have a market (space elevators). | alphabetting wrote: | Waymo has developed the modern autonomous vehicle from | the ground up. It's basically a matter of scale now. It's | a mindblowing tech stack. The first time riding in one is | much more otherwordly than using GPT for the first time. | The value of the technology is far greater whatever PR | they have generated (not many people know about it) | dekhn wrote: | I have infinite respect for the process that Waymo | followed to get to where they are. And I'm impressed that | Google continued to fund the project and move it forward | even when it represents such a long-term bet. | | but it's not a product that has any real revenue. and | most car companies keep their distance from google self- | driving tech because they're afraid. afraid google wants | to put them out of business. It's unclear if google could | ever sell (as a product, as an IP package, etc) what | they've created because it depends so deeply on a | collection of technology google makes available to waymo. | alphabetting wrote: | I was just disputing "X exists as a press-release | generation system, not as a real technology creation | system." Definitely agree the path to profitability will | be tough. | mechagodzilla wrote: | Waymo is kind of like DeepMind - they're costing Alphabet | billions of dollars a year for a decade+ with no appreciable | revenue to show for it, but they're working on something | _neat_ , so surely it must be good? | choppaface wrote: | I agree that the OP makes a bunch of interesting points, but I | think historically Brain really grew out of what Dean wanted to | do and the fact that he wanted it to be full-stack, e.g. | including the TPU. Also, crucially, Brain would use Google data | and contribute back to Ads/Search directly versus Google X | which was supposed to be more of an incubator. | | But it's also notable how the perspective of an ex-Brain | employee might differ from what sparked the Brain founders in | the first place. | marricks wrote: | [flagged] | calrissian wrote: | > Also not surprised at the immediate down votes for | questioning Googles new AI lead! | | That's because you are wrong to pretend he did anything wrong | by firing T.G. And also, because you added this weird | lie/mudslinging/whatever on top of it: | | > while she was on vacation | Traubenfuchs wrote: | A lot of people, especially on hacker news, feel disdain for | researchers of ethics, bias and fairness, as they are | perceived as both holding technology back and profiting from | advances in it (that they can then analyse and criticize). | calrissian wrote: | I don't think you're necessarily wrong in your assesment | about HN and AI enthusiasts, but also in this case I think | it's more accurate to talk about a Twitter agitator and | race-baiter [1], rather than a "researcher of ethics, bias | and fairness". | | [1] https://twitter.com/timnitGebru/status/1651055495271137 | 280?s... | hintymad wrote: | Controvery of what? Did you read Gebru's paper? For instance, | her calculation of carbon footprint of training BERT assumes | that companies will train BERT 24x7. Gebru is a disgrace to | the community because she always, I mean literally always, | attacks her critics by motives. You think bias is a data | problem? You're a bigot (See her dispute with LeCun). You | disagree with my assessment on an ML model? You are white | male oppressor (her attacking a Google's SVP). | | Gebru is not a researcher. She is a modern-age Trofim | Lysenko, who politicizes everything and weaponizes political | correctness. | | And yeah, she deserves to be fired. Many times. | erenyeager wrote: | Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the field | and the important role people like Gebru played in | extending the political and status of minorities is ok to | extinguish? We need more than just white male / Chinese | male / Indian male monoculture "STEM lords". This is | already recognized in fields like medicine, where | minorities treating minorities results in better outcomes | and the greater push to open positions of status to | minorities. | Silverback_VII wrote: | I personally believe that racial or diversity quotas are | even more racist or sexist. We should expect minorities | to develop their own culture of intellectual excellence. | After all, they are no longer children. Giving them a | shortcut is a form of insult. Providing someone an | advantage based on their race or sex at the expense of | someone else who is more qualified due to their race or | sex is nonsensical. Companies may fail as a result of | such practices. Ultimately, what truly matters is how | innovative and efficient a company is. | qumpis wrote: | Yes, uplifting minorities is great, but anyone should be | accountable equally when it comes to workplace conduct | logicchains wrote: | >Ok but the lack of underrepresented minorities in the | field and the important role people like Gebru played in | extending the political and status of minorities is ok to | extinguish? | | Yes it's okay to extinguish it if hiring underrepresented | minorities means hiring bad actors like her who | contribute nothing of value. Scientific truth is | scientific truth; if you hire people for the color of | their skin or their sexuality instead of their ability to | produce truth, you slow the progress of science and make | the world worse for everyone. | belval wrote: | This seems like a pretty bad faith argument that | illustrates exactly the point the parent comment was | making. Firing Gebru for insubordination is not | "extinguishing" anything, it's getting rid of an employee | that was actively taking pot shots at the company in her | paper and somehow equated getting fired with anti- | minority bias. In practice, Google is already much more | tolerant of activism than the average tech company and | she was unable to play by the corporate rules. | hintymad wrote: | > important role people like Gebru played in extending | the political and status of minorities is ok to | extinguish? | | No, she didn't. Attacking everyone for baseless motives | and identities is the worst kind of activism. She | alienated people by attacking them without basis. She | disdained those who truly fought for the fairness and | justice of every race. She left a bad taste in people who | truly cared about progress. Yes, it's totally worth | "extinguishing" her role, as her role is nothing but a | political charade. | | As for under-repented minorities, do you even know the | Chinese Exclusion Act? Do you know how large the pipeline | of the STEM students in different races and why there was | a gap? Do you know why the median GPA of the high school | students in the inner city was 0.5X out of 4? Why was | that? The questions can fill a book. Yeah, activism is | easy, as long as you have the right skin and shameless | attitude. Solving real problems is hard. | renewiltord wrote: | These safety people guarantee a useless product that never | does unsafe things. ChatGPT proved that you can have a | product do unsafe things and still be useful if you put a | disclaimer on it. Overall, as a user, I couldn't give a damn | if things are unsafe by the definition of this style of | ethicist. They were a ZIRP and my life is better for their | absence. | mupuff1234 wrote: | Or maybe it's just not perceived as controversial? | | Her boss told her to do something, she refused and got | sacked. | qumpis wrote: | Wiki doesn't seem to give detail into the situation, nor the | paper in question | dekhn wrote: | That's a very simplified version of the story, but I would | say that Dean greatly reduced his stature when he defended | Megan Kacholia for her abrupt termination of Timnit. Note | that Timnit was verbally abusive to Jeff's reports, anybody | who worked there could see what she was posting to internal | group discussions, so her time at Google was limited, but | most managers would say that she should had at least been put | on a pip and given 6 months. | | Dean has since cited the paper in a subsequent paper (which | tears apart the Stochastic Parrots paper). | marricks wrote: | Google has since fired other folks on her team and was in | crisis mode to protect Dean. Like, I'm not really going to | give them the benefit of the doubt on this. | | When people brought Dean up Timnit came up as something to | consider, it's interesting to see how all anyone has to say | in these threads is reverence towards him. People should | try to see the whole picture. | opportune wrote: | Being somewhat involved in one bad thing doesn't justify | cancelling someone. | | To my knowledge Dean was essentially doing post-hoc | damage control for what one of the middle managers in his | org did. Even if they did want Timnit gone (as others | mention, you are getting only one side of the story in | media) they did it in a bad way, for sure. At the same | time I don't think one botched firing diminishes decades | of achievements from a legitimately kind person. | jeffbee wrote: | Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd who got fired | from Google seem like some of the most ignorant people | around. I don't defend Dean reflexively, it just seems | like he is on the right side of the issue. For example, | here is Emma Strubell accusing Dean of creating a "toxic | workplace culture" after he and David Patterson had to | refute her paper in print. | | https://twitter.com/strubell/status/1634164078691098625?l | ang... | | The thing is if David Patterson and Jeff Dean think your | numbers for the energy cost of machine learning might be | wrong, then you are probably wrong. These ML meta- | researchers are not practitioners and appear to have no | idea what they are talking about. Keeping a person like | Timnit or Strubell on staff seems like it costs more than | its worth. | dragonwriter wrote: | > Timnit and the other ex-ML ethics crowd | | Timnit is ex-Google, but very much not ex-ML ethics | (fouded Distributed AI Research Institute focussed on the | field in late 2021). Very much also true of Margaret | Mitchell, who has been at Hugging Face since 2021. | Silverback_VII wrote: | She appears to be a symbol for everything that went wrong at | Google. These are the kind of problems that arise when life | is too easy, just before the downfall. In other words, | decadence. How else can one explain that Google's AI research | was dethroned by OpenAI? | hintymad wrote: | Yeah, Dean's fault is hiring such people in the first | place. If you hire an activist, you get activism. And if | you hire someone whose livelihood depends on finding more | problems, well, they will scream more problems, one way or | another. Otherwise, why would state U of Mich got one DEI | officer per three staff members? | antipaul wrote: | Why does Google X exist? | liuyipei wrote: | Google has good engineers and a long history of high throughput | computing. This, combined with a lack of understanding what ML | research is like (versus deployment), led to the original TF1 | API. Also, the fact that google has good engineers working in a | big bureaucracy probably hid a lot of the design problems as | well. | | TF2 was a total failure, in that TF1 can do a few things really | well when you get the hang of it, but TF2 was just a strictly | inferior version of pytorch, further plagued by confusion due to | TF1. In alternate history, if Google pivoted in to JAX much | earlier and more aggressively, they could still be in the game. I | speak as someone who has at some point knew all the intricacies | and differences between TF1 and TF2. | htrp wrote: | To prevent talented people from developing tech elsewhere. | dbish wrote: | MSR seemed like it had a similar underlying purpose (or at | least nice side effect). | nologic01 wrote: | > it is becoming increasingly apparent to Google that it does not | know how to capture that value | | To paraphrase, its the business model, stupid. | | Inventing algorithms, building powerful tools and infrastructure | etc is actually a tractable problem: you can throw money and | brains at it (and the latter typically follows the former). While | the richness of research fields is not predictable, you can bet | that the general project of employing silicon to work with | information will keep bearing fruits for a long time. So creating | that value is not the problem. | | The problem with capitalizing (literally) on that intellectual | output is that it can only be done 1) within a given business | model that can channel effectively it or 2) through the invention | of totally new business models. 1) is a challenge: These billions | of users on which AI goodies can surface are not customers, they | are product. They don't pay for anything and they don't create | any virtuous circle of requirements and solutions. Alas, option | 2) inventing major new business models is highly non-trivial. The | track record is poor: the only major alternative business model | to adtech (cloud unit) was not invented there anyway and in any | case selling sophisticated IT services whether to consumers or | enterprise is a can of worms that others have much more | experience in. | | For a industrial research unit to thrive, its output must be | congruent with what the organization is doing. Not necessarily in | the detail, but definitely in the big picture. | amoss wrote: | > Today, thought leaders casually opine on how and where ML will | be useful, and MBAs feel like this is an acceptable substitute | for expert opinion. | | Sounds like standard operating procedure. | kps wrote: | Sounds like something LLMs would actually be good for. They're | not getting us fusion power or cancer cures. | [deleted] | vrglvrglvrgl wrote: | [dead] | nipponese wrote: | Organized, concise, and not wordy. Props to the writer, he shows | a deep degree of written communication skills on a topic | frequently cluttered with jargon. | light_hue_1 wrote: | > The next obvious reason for Google to invest in pure research | is for the breakthrough discoveries it has yielded and can | continue to yield. As a rudimentary brag sheet, Brain gave Google | TensorFlow, TPUs, significantly improved Translate, JAX, and | Transformers. | | Except that these advances have made other companies an | existential threat for Google. 2 years ago it was hard to imagine | what could topple Google. Now a lot of people can see a clear | path: large language models. | | From a business perspective it's astounding what a massive | failure Google Brain has been. Basically nothing has spun out of | it to benefit Google. And yet at the same time, so much has | leaked out, and so many people have left with that knowledge | Google paid for, that Google might go the way of Yahoo in 10 | years. | | This is the simpler explanation of the Brain-Deep Mind merger: | both Brain and Deep Mind have fundamentally failed as businesses. | [deleted] | sushid wrote: | It truly feels like Google Brain could be considered Google's | equivalent of Bell Labs in the 70s. | cma wrote: | > And yet at the same time, so much has leaked out, and so many | people have left with that knowledge Google paid for, that | Google might go the way of Yahoo in 10 years. | | Google couldn't have hired the talent they did without allowing | them to publish. | dekhn wrote: | Google never talked much about it externally, but Google | Research (the predecessor to Brain) had a single project which | almost entirely funded the entire division- a growth-oriented | machine learnign system called Sibyl. What was sibyl used for? | Growing youtube and google play and other products by making | the more addictive. Sibyl wasn't a very good system (I've never | seen a product that had more technical debt) but it did | basically "pay for" all of the research for a while. | temac wrote: | Seems to be quite evil though. | onlyrealcuzzo wrote: | Every business is essentially in the business of making | people addicted to their products in some way. | | You're an oil company - you want people to drive as much as | possible. | | You're an airline company - you want people to fly all over | the world as much as possible. | | You're a fashion company - you want people to buy new | clothes constantly. | | You're a beverage company - you want people drinking your | drink all the time instead of water. | | You're an Internet advertising company - you want people's | eyeballs on your products as much as possible (to blast | them with ads). | | It's just business. | wetmore wrote: | That doesn't mean it's not evil though? | packetslave wrote: | It's evil if you phrase it (as OP did) as "getting people | addicted to YouTube". | | Less so if you phrase it "show people recommendations that | they're likely to actually click on, based on what they've | watched previously", which is what Sybil really was. | throwaway29303 wrote: | In case anyone is wondering what Sibyl is all about, here's a | video | | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3SaZ5UAQrQM | dekhn wrote: | Yep- that goes into a fair amount of detail. Sibyl was | retired but many of the ideas lived on in TFX. I worked on | it a bit and it was definitely the weirdest, most | technically-debt-ridden systems I've ever seen, but it was | highly effective at getting people additicted to watching | Youtube and downloading games that showed ads. | abtinf wrote: | It's like Xerox PARC all over again. | jeffbee wrote: | > Basically nothing has spun out of it to benefit Google | | Quite a ridiculous statement. Google has inserted ML all over | their products. Maybe you just don't notice, to their credit. | But for example the fact that YouTube can automatically | generate subtitles for any written language from any spoken | language is a direct outcome of Google ML research. There are | lots of machine-inferred search ranking signals. Google Sheets | will automatically fill in your formulas, that's in-house ML | research, too. | light_hue_1 wrote: | > Quite a ridiculous statement. Google has inserted ML all | over their products. Maybe you just don't notice, to their | credit. But for example the fact that YouTube can | automatically generate subtitles for any written language | from any spoken language is a direct outcome of Google ML | research. There are lots of machine-inferred search ranking | signals. Google Sheets will automatically fill in your | formulas, that's in-house ML research, too. | | I noticed all the toy demos. None of these have provided | Google with any competitive advantage over anyone. | | For the investment, Google Brain has been a massive failure. | It provided Google with essentially zero value. And helped | create competitors. | sudosysgen wrote: | Automatic subtitles and translation is actually a huge | feature which is very useful to the many people that don't | speak English. It definitely did provide Google with a lot | of value. | light_hue_1 wrote: | > Automatic subtitles and translation is actually a huge | feature which is very useful to the many people that | don't speak English. It definitely did provide Google | with a lot of value. | | It lost Google immense value. | | Before Google Brain the only speech recognizers that | halfway worked were at Google, IBM and Amazon. And Amazon | had to buy a company to get access. | | After Google Brain, anyone can run a speech recognizer. | One that is state of the art. There are many models out | there that just work well enough. | | Google went from having an ok speech recognizer that sort | of worked in a few languages and gave YouTube an | advantage that no company aside from IBM and Amazon could | touch. Neither of which compete with Google much. No | startup could have anything like Google's captioning. It | was untouchable. Like, speech recognition researchers | actively avoided this competition, that's how inferior | everyone was. | | To now, post Google Brain, any startup can have captions | that are as good as YouTube's captions. You can run | countless models on your laptop today. | | This is a huge competitive loss for Google. | | They got a minor feature for YouTube and lost one of the | key ML advantages they had. | sp332 wrote: | But little startups are not threatening YouTube. And now | they are paying money to Google for the use of Google | Brain. | light_hue_1 wrote: | You can run your speech recognizer on AWS, you don't need | to give Google a cent. | | Whatever comes after YouTube, if it's a startup or not, | it will have top-notch captioning, just like YouTube. | Google gave up a massive competitive advantage with huge | technical barriers. | sudosysgen wrote: | It's too late now. YouTube penetrated every single market | outside of China and is now unshakeable from network | effect | | It completely paid off already, and Google is going to be | reaping the dividends of the advantage they had in | emerging markets for the next 15 years. | | The real advantage has always been network effect. Purely | technological moats don't work in the long term. People | catching up was inevitable, but Google was able to cash | it into a untouchable worldwide lead, and on top of that | they made their researchers happy and recruited others by | allowing them to publish, and they don't need to maintain | an expensive purely technical lead. | loudmax wrote: | > It provided Google with essentially zero value. | | Or rather, it provided enormous value. The failure was for | Google to actually capture more than a tiny fraction of | that value. | | No amount of engineering brilliance is going to save Google | as long as the management is dysfunctional. | light_hue_1 wrote: | Oh, I don't disagree at all that Google Brain provided | enormous value for society. Just like Xerox PARC. Both of | them were a massive drain on resources and provided | negative value for the parent company. | | And I agree, it's not Google Brain's fault. Google's | management has been a disaster for a long time. It's just | amazing how you can have every advantage and still | achieve nothing. | QuercusMax wrote: | A ton of the new stuff in the pixel cameras is ML powered, | along with a lot of Google Photos. | asdfman123 wrote: | Google has very good LLMs. It just let OpenAI beat them to the | punch by releasing them earlier. | | As an established business, Google felt it had a lot to lose by | releasing "unsafe" AI into the world. But OpenAI doesn't have a | money printing machine, and it's sink-or-swim for them. | snapcaster wrote: | I keep hearing this, but Bard sucks so badly when i've tried | to use it like GPT-4 or compare results its like night and | day. What makes you so confident they have "secret" LLMs that | are superior? | jeffbee wrote: | Bard is in full-scale production to all U.S. users for | free. GPT-4 costs $20/month. Rather a big difference in the | economics of the situation. Also it's pretty clear that | even the $20 is highly subsidized. Microsoft is willing to | incinerate almost any amount of money to harm Google. | snapcaster wrote: | Free but unuseably bad <<<<<<<<<<< $20 but using it 20-30 | times a day at work | | seriously have you tried it? compared it to even GPT-3? | it really really sucks | jeffbee wrote: | Yes I think it has less utility than the free version of | ChatGPT, but it also has some nice points, is faster, and | has fewer outages. | | For my use case none of them is worth using. All three of | the ones we've mentioned in this thread will just make up | language features that would be useful but don't exist, | and all three of them will hallucinate imaginary sections | of the C++ standard to explain them. Bard loves | `std::uint128_t`. GPT-4 will make up GIS coordinate | reference systems that don't exist. For me they are all | more trouble than they are worth, on the daily. | cubefox wrote: | GPT-4 is also free to all users, not just from the US, | with 200 turns per day and 20 per conversation. It's just | called "Bing Chat mode" instead of GPT-4. Of course | Microsoft is losing money with it. But Microsoft can | afford to lose money. | asdfman123 wrote: | Have you tried PaLM? | | I work for Google and have been playing with it. It's | pretty good. | | The decision to release Bard, an LLM that was clearly not | as good as ChatGPT, struck me as reactive and is why people | think Google is behind. I'd think so too if I had just | demoed Bard. | snapcaster wrote: | No, but would love to try it. I'm using these models | 20-30 times a day throughout the average work day for | random tasks so have a pretty good sense of performance | levels. Didn't think it was available to public yet but | just saw it's apparently on google cloud now, i'll have | to try it out. How do you compare Palm with GPT4 if | you've had a chance to try both? | asdfman123 wrote: | Seems pretty similar. In general Google LLMs seem better | suited for just conversation and ChatGPT is built to | honor "write me X in the style of Y" prompts. | | The latter is more interesting to play around with, | granted, and I think it's an area where Google can catch | up, but it doesn't seem like a huge technical hurdle. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-04-26 23:00 UTC)