Smart Software Is Innovative: Two Marketing Examples, You Doltish Humanoids
December 7, 2021
I zipped through the news releases, headlines, and emails which accumulate in my system. I spotted two stories. Each made the case that smart software — created by humans — is discerning information humans had not previously known or had revealed. This assertion has some interesting implications. There are issues associated with Kurt Gödel-type thinking and the Star Trek think which has launched billions of smart phones.
Here’s the first article. It’s called “AI Is Discovering Patterns in Pure Mathematics That Have Never Been Seen Before.” That’s a clickable title. The write up asserts:
In a newly published study, a research team used artificial intelligence systems developed by DeepMind, the same company that has been deploying AI to solve tricky biology problems and improve the accuracy of weather forecasts, to unknot some long-standing math problems.
DeepMind is pretty much Google. Google is a fan of Snorkel methods. These procedures use minimal training and then let math learn. The outputs are — well — Googley. You know solving the big problems of life like online advertising, reducing the costs of alternative methods of training smart software, and dealing with the legal hassles associated with the alleged “AI cabal” and Timnit Gebru.
The second article is “AI Generates Hypotheses Human Scientists Have Not Thought Of.” The write up says:
One of the benefits of machine learning systems is the way that they can look for patterns and scenarios that programmers didn’t specifically code them to look out for – they take their training data and apply the same principles to new situations. The research shows that this sort of high-speed, ultra-reliable, large-scale data processing can act as an extra tool working with mathematicians’ natural intuition. When you’re dealing with complex, lengthy equations, that can make a significant difference.
What’s interesting is that the write up does not link the researchers with DeepMind. But it appears that the mathematician András Juhász has worked with Googley DeepMind. See “DeepMind AI Collaborates with Humans on Two Mathematical Breakthroughs.”
The first item cited in this blog post appeared on December 4, 2021. The second appeared in October 2021.
My thought is that the Google is injecting rah rah messages about its Snorkel-type approach into highly regarded publications. My hope is that Dr. Timnit Gebru’s and her work gets equal coverage.
Why? The Google wants to be the big dog in certain smart software dog sled pulling. But inbreeding has its downsides; including, bias. PR firms and rah rah marketers are not sensitive to such mathematical oddities as “drift” in my experience. From peer reviewed articles to the open market for “great ideas”, information marches forward on the wheels of propaganda and factual reformation it does, it does.
Stephen E Arnold, December 6, 2021
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