Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Students from Fast.ai, a small organization that runs free machine-learning courses online, just created an AI algorithm that outperforms code from Google's researchers, according to an important benchmark.
Fast.ai's success is important because it sometimes seems as if only those with huge resources can do advanced AI research.
Fast.ai consists of part-time students keen to try their hand at machine learning—and perhaps transition into a career in data science. It rents access to computers in Amazon's cloud.
But Fast.ai's team built an algorithm that beats Google's code, as measured using a benchmark called DAWNBench, from researchers at Stanford. This benchmark uses a common image classification task to track the speed of a deep-learning algorithm per dollar of compute power.
Google's researchers topped the previous rankings, in a category for training on several machines, using a custom-built collection its own chips designed specifically for machine learning. The Fast.ai team was able to produce something even faster, on roughly equivalent hardware.
"State-of-the-art results are not the exclusive domain of big companies," says Jeremy Howard, one of Fast.ai's founders and a prominent AI entrepreneur. Howard and his cofounder, Rachel Thomas, created Fast.ai to make AI more accessible and less exclusive.
Source: https://www.technologyreview.com/s/611858/small-team-of-ai-coders-beats-googles-code/
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @05:48PM (15 children)
We see again and again that innovation comes from the small guy—the underdog who is forced by "naivete" and limited resources to look in places where the Big Boys wouldn't even deign to consider.
This is why Capitalism is essential to the betterment of mankind; there must always be the freedom for the individual to allocate his own capital however he sees fit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:09PM (8 children)
No need to stuff "freedom for the individual to allocate his own capital however he sees fit" in BIG C capitalism. Nothing like simplistic scenarios to bolster your ideology.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:15PM (7 children)
I know which side I want to prevail.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 15 2018, @06:53PM (6 children)
If you don't believe me, fetch some magnet links from The Pirate Bay without using Tor, then torrent them from home or work without using a VPN.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:00PM (4 children)
Capitalism: The rules of interaction are negotiated in advance.
Non-Capitalism: The rules of interaction are decreed and imposed.
You guys can't have it both ways. You can't decry capitalism for its supposed lack of regulation,* and then turn around and complain about the order that emerges from the application of capitalism.
* Naturally, over time, Capitalism produces the finest-grain, strictest, most robust regulation possible; capitalism demands ever-more clearly established rules of interaction, produced through an iterative process of contract negotiation, dispute resolution, and enforcement (as agreed).
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:37PM (3 children)
The Berne Copyright Convention was negotiated by representatives from each of its signatory states.
The US representative I expect was appointed by the president, or perhaps the secretary of state.
That president was elected.
If you've got a gripe with copyright law, elect a different kind of president.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:48PM (2 children)
Capitalism is far more fundamental than America's "representative" governance. What is being described here transcends law by legislation; capitalism is law by contracts.
Even if you disagree with copyright law, the fact remains that producers are telling you in advance that they may fuck you up if you choose to consume their work in a way that they find disagreeable—they are laying out their position so that you can choose how to interact with them. So, guess what? If you don't want trouble from them, then you've got 2 solid choices:
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:55PM
In many cases that works really well. For example my own creative commons piano EP [soggywizards.com]. We also have Vim and - dare I admit to it? - Emacs. There is GDB, GCC and the Linux kernel.
But then we have gEdit as I experienced it the first time I tried to use it:
It was only capable of holding the text that was visible in its window. I copied lots of text from some other program, pasted it into gEdit then quit that other app. When I scrolled down in my gEdit window the rest of that text was _gone_.
Yet is was bundled with a popular Linux distro. I could name many other offenders.
I have a good reason for my - usually but not always - preference for code that I pay for: if that code sucks I won't buy it anymore; neither will anyone else. Either its publisher fixes the problems or it goes out of business.
I'm not saying I always prefer closed-source code - there is lots of Open Source and Free Software that I pay for, for example the copy of Vim that came with my MacBook Pro. I don't know about Apple's Vim in particular but it patches lots of OH HOW I HATE THIS WORD: FLOSS codebases before it ships then in macOS - the operating system formerly known by most as Mac Oh Ess Ecks but by Apple as Mac Oh Ess Ten.
For the most part Apple does the right thing by distributing source [apple.com].
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @01:01AM
Third choice: Muzzle the biting dogs.
They lobbied the Congress to grant them those teeth.
If the electorate gets pissed enough, they will elect in a Congress that will remove those grants.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:14PM
I do so daily, haven't received so much as a warning. I live in the US. I don't watch movies, and only a select few TV shows, but I do have a large and growing music library.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Wednesday August 15 2018, @08:31PM (2 children)
Who would have thought...
It seems that roughly 20 years ago, some small guy had a search engine algorithm that turned everyone else's results to shit...
I wonder who that was... /s
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @12:18AM (1 child)
Only that the algorithm was probably stolen from Yandex by his father.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @05:18AM
Oh yeah...right. The Russians have always tried to claim they invented something. Seems we have found the Russian bot.
(Score: 2, Informative) by anubi on Wednesday August 15 2018, @11:42PM
Case in point... the "Strowger Switch" [wikipedia.org] which was invented by a pissed off undertaker who had to find some way to keep the telephone operator from routing calls to his competitor.
So, he figured out a way to get the telephone operator out of the loop. So there was no longer anyone there to reroute his customers to his competitor.
I am all for the free enterprise and capitalism thing, but it has to run on sane foundations... the foundation of copyright law and patenting has got so far out of whack that its gotten counterproductive to the advancement of society. One cannot milk a past work for nearly so long, just as one can't expect lifetimes of payment for fixing a washing machine or laying some brick. If they want to call it "property", complete with "get off my lawn" kinda stuff, after 10 years or so, start charging property tax at the same rate that everyone else is paying for property tax ( i.e. homeowners ).
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by unhandyandy on Thursday August 16 2018, @02:59PM (1 child)
"there must always be the freedom for the individual to allocate his own capital however he sees fit."
There's a conflation here of two different flavors of capitalism: competitive markets, which are generally good (with some exceptions like health care) and free markets, which are good only to the extent they're competitive. Crony capitalism is the worst of both worlds - socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 16 2018, @07:00PM
A government is fundamentally anti-capitalism; taking resources at the point of a gun is the antithesis of capitalism—picking winners and losers wither other people's resources is the antithesis of capitalism.
You call it "Crony Capitalism", but it contradicts the very fundamental requirements of Capitalism. That is why you are so confused. IT IS NOT CAPITALISM. Quit calling it what it isn't.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by darkfeline on Wednesday August 15 2018, @07:22PM
> The Fast.ai team was able to produce something even faster, on roughly equivalent hardware (custom-built collection [of Google's] own chips designed specifically for machine learning).
So only as accessible as Google makes its custom built machine learning chips, then.
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