Smart Software Is Like the Brain Because…. Money, Fame, and Tenure
November 4, 2022
I enjoy reading the marketing collateral from companies engaged in “artificial intelligence.” Let me be clear. Big money is at stake. A number of companies have spreadsheet fever and have calculated the cash flow from dominating one or more of the AI markets. Examples range from synthetic dataset sales to off-the-shelf models, from black boxes which “learn” how to handle problems that stump MBAs to building control subsystems that keep aircraft which would drop like rocks without numerical recipes humming along.
“Study Urges Caution When Comparing Neural Networks to the Brain” comes with some baggage. First, the write up is in what appears to be a publication linked with MIT. I think of Jeffrey Epstein when MIT is mentioned. Why? The estimable university ignored what some believe are the precepts of higher education to take cash and maybe get invited to an interesting party. Yep, MIT. Second, the university itself has been a hot bed of smart software. Cheerleading has been heard emanating from some MIT facilities when venture capital flows to a student’s start up in machine learning or an MIT alum cashes out with a smart software breakthrough. The rah rah, I wish to note, is because of money, not nifty engineering.
The write up states:
In an analysis of more than 11,000 neural networks that were trained to simulate the function of grid cells — key components of the brain’s navigation system — the researchers found that neural networks only produced grid-cell-like activity when they were given very specific constraints that are not found in biological systems. “What this suggests is that in order to obtain a result with grid cells, the researchers training the models needed to bake in those results with specific, biologically implausible implementation choices,” says Rylan Schaeffer, a former senior research associate at MIT.
What this means is that smart software is like the butcher near our home in Campinas, Brazil, in 1952. For Americans, the butcher’s thumb boosted the weight of the object on the scale. My mother who was unaware of this trickery just paid up none the wiser. A friend of our family, Adair Ricci pointed out the trick and he spoke with the butcher. That professional stopped gouging my mother. Mr. Ricci had what I would later learn to label as “influence.”
The craziness in the AI marketing collateral complements the trickery in many academic papers. When I read research results about AI from Google-type outfits, I assume that the finger on the scale trick has been implemented. Who is going to talk? Timnit Gebru did and look what happened? Find your future elsewhere. What about the Snorkel-type of outfit? You may want to take a “deep dive” on that issue.
Now toss in marketing. I am not limiting marketing to the art history major whose father is a venture capitalist with friends. This young expert in Caravaggio’s selection of color can write about AI. I am including the enthusiastic believers who have turned open source, widely used algorithms, and a college project into a company. The fictional thrust of PowerPoints, white papers, and speeches at “smart” software conferences are confections worthy of the Meilleur Ouvrier of smart software.
Several observations:
- Big players in smart software want to control the food chain: Models, datasets, software components, everything
- Smart software works in certain use cases. In others, not a chance. Example: Would you stand in front of a 3000 smart car speeding along at 70 miles per hour trusting the smart car to stop before striking you with 491,810 foot pounds of energy? I would not. Would the president of MIT stare down the automobile? Hmmmm.
- No one “wins” by throwing water on the flaming imaginations of smart software advocates.
Net net: Is smart software like a brain? No, the human brain thinks in terms of tenure, money, power, and ad sales.
Stephen E Arnold, November 4, 2022
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