Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by martyb on Monday July 15 2019, @04:22AM   Printer-friendly
from the we'll-optimize-the-computes-with-AI dept.

Facebook VP: AI has a compute dependency problem

In one of his first public speaking appearances since joining Facebook to lead its AI initiatives, VP Jérôme Pesenti expressed concern about the growing amount of compute power needed to create powerful AI systems.

“I can tell you this is keeping me up at night,” Pesenti said. “The peak compute companies like Facebook and Google can afford for an experiment, we are reaching that already.”

More software innovation will be required if artificial intelligence is to grow unhindered, he said, and optimization of hardware and software — rather than brute force compute — may be critical to AI in years ahead.

Examples of systems less reliant on compute for innovative breakthroughs include Pluribus, an AI system developed by Facebook AI Research and Carnegie Mellon University and introduced today, that can take on world-class poker players. In an article in Science, researchers said Pluribus only required $150 in cloud computing to train.

The end of Moore’s Law means the compute needed to create the most advanced AI is going up.

In fact, Pesenti cited an OpenAI analysis that found the compute necessary to create state-of-the-art systems has gone up 10 times each year since 2012.

“We still see gains with increase of compute, but the pressure from the problem is just going to become bigger,” Pesenti said. “I think we will still continue to use more compute, you will still net, but it will go slower, because you cannot keep pace with 10 times a year. That’s just not possible.”


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @01:30PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 15 2019, @01:30PM (#867174)

    > It's a crutch for when you don't want to build a model to solve your problem.

    Thanks for bringing this up again!

    I still remember reading an early paper on fuzzy logic in the 1980s, it promoted fuzzy as the second coming. After I thought about it for awhile, I realized that all the hype was a slight improvement on a bang-bang controller (like a simple thermostat). It might be suitable for some "lo-tech" systems and cases where the plant to be controlled can't be well defined, but is no substitute for control theory with a good model of the process to be controlled.