As AI Explodes, Investors Pour Big Bucks Into Startups (siliconangle.com) 139
Investment in AI startups is on a tear as venture capitalists and corporate investors scramble to stake out a leadership position in what could be the driving trend in technology for decades to come. From a report: The financial interest in AI, machine learning and related technologies is hardly new. CB Insights has tracked some $18.4 billion invested in 2,541 AI-related startups since 2012. But the trend is only accelerating. In the latest MoneyTree report from PricewaterhouseCoopers and CB Insights, which showed otherwise mostly stagnant startup funding, AI and machine learning companies shined, reaching an eight-quarter high of $820 million invested in 90 companies. A flurry of significant investments in a number of AI-related companies this past week underscored the point. On Wednesday alone, for instance, AI-powered analytics software provider CognitiveScale raised a $15 million round, voice AI startup Snips raised $13 million and, to top it off, machine learning consultancy Element AI got an unusually large $102 million early-stage investment just eight months after the company was launched. Then on Thursday and Friday, two other AI-powered companies, Conviva and Codota, announced fundings too.
AI is not "exploding" (Score:5, Insightful)
First, there is nothing besides weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no "I", better called "automation"). Second, it is not "exploding". There have been no fundamental breakthroughs for quite a while. There have been gradual speed-improvements, but they are, well, gradual. The only thing that has been "exploding" is the hype about AI, i.e. this is nothing but a bubble of hot air.
Of course some people will get rich from this, but there will be no fundamentally new products or services from this anytime soon.
Re:AI is not "exploding" (Score:4, Funny)
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Is "Explodes" a metaphor or a prescient description of the future under, "A.I."?
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Is "Explodes" a metaphor or a prescient description of the future under, "A.I."?
I just finished re-reading "The Two Faces of Tomorrow," the first novel in "Cyber Rogue" [amzn.to] by James P. Hogan, one of my favorite SF stories from the early 1980's, where scientists set up an advanced AI to manage a space station and the military went to war to determine whether or not they could pull the plug if the AI determines that humans are a nuisance. The only thing that almost exploded was the nuclear bomb that the military installed just in case the AI went kablooey.
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You just posted that yesterday.
https://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=10755649&cid=54644759
Are you such a lazy fat asshole you copy/paste your Amazon spam here?
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Are you such a lazy fat asshole you copy/paste your Amazon spam here?
Since I have a Python script to pull my comment history from Slashdot, I've been copying and pasting relevant comments for several months now.
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"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress" [goodreads.com]
Good read.
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"The Moon is a Harsh Mistress"
I've read many RAH novels but never got around to reading that one yet.
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And you're welcome for giving you a grammar lesson.
If you're going to be grammar nazi on Slashdot, you need to put more bite into your comments. This schoolmarm attitude doesn't cut it. You would be more effective if the person you're attacking actually cares about your opinion. You're wasting your time on me.
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I spent the time to correct your grammar - you're a published author who hopes to build a devoted readership.
I explained this before but you're probably ignore it anyway. I don't have an editorial process for comments on Slashdots. I will never have an editorial process for comments on Slashdot. There isn't enough half-cents to make it worth my while.
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No "editorial process" required if you write properly from the start [...]
If you think my comments on Slashdot is bad, you should see my handwritten or typewritten rough drafts.
And since you're a writer, who's very concerned with his "personal brand," you should REALLY care if you're giving the impression that you're an illiterate mung bean.
An asshat thought it was cute to re-post my 2016 picture on an image website last night [slashdot.org]. A DMCA takedown notice took it down this morning.
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Why do you feel that your photos reflect so badly upon you as a writer, but that your grammar doesn't?
If you want to admire my picture, go to my webpage [cdreimer.com] with the updated 2017 picture — and thanks for the ad revenues.
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Who would pay you for that? Why? How?
Google. Every webpage that I control has a Google ad. Whenever someone clicks on my link and a Google ad successfully loads into a web browser, an "impression" is created. Many impressions add up to a penny. Many pennies add up to some serious money. If someone clicks on an ad, coffee money!
You are obviously trying to compensate for your horrific nothingness.
That compensation gets direct deposited into my business checking account every month.
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As a writer, I would think the emphasis would be on the writing skills.
Yes, for the markets I care about. Slashdot isn't one of them. That you think Slashdot is still relevant to the world at large is cute.
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You should be studied, understood, and either helped or explained to the rest of the world.
That's what I'm doing with Slashdot . I didn't think Slashdot had any female readers. You learn something new every day.
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How you fail to see them as inter-related is beyond me.
When I submit my short stories to publications, I use a different email address, I don't provide a credit list and I don't link back to my website. My short stories are accepted or rejected on their own merits. Keep in mind that some of these editors are still using WordPerfect and haven't moved into the 21st century yet.
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Yeah no shit, if I submitted the gibberish you write I'd try to stay anonymous as well. So you *do* have some sort of shame.
Some editors won't provide feedback if they think that you had some success. If I come across as a noob, they're more likely to write something down on the rejection slip.
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....and we roll the dice again ...
Go watch Eli the Computer Guy take a piss on vid.me (YouTube competitor).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_xPp0IEamTo [youtube.com]
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Looks like you have a Grammar Stalker.
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Dude.
You need help. Google OCD.
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You must be a Slashdot, "editor" because long before now regular uses are shut down with the message about "you've said enough on this topic today"
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And the 3rd reason is quickly improving algorithms. Also, the GPUs are being replaced by TPUs, dedicated for neural processing at much higher speeds and lower power.
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That thing does not exist. Algorithms are improving glacially slow or not at all at this time.
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That thing does not exist. Algorithms are improving glacially slow or not at all at this time.
Your comment is at odds with all of the research I could find on the topic. For instance this paper [intelligence.org] estimates that between 33%-50% of recent improvements in AI come from algorithmic improvements. In a quick Google search I couldn't find any research papers claiming hardware improvements are the only source of new breakthroughs in AI or any other computation heavy domain.
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In 2013, date of the report, Deep Learning was not yet on the table except for a small number of researchers. This is the case now. DL algorithms were devised in the 1990s, with improvement in better choices of activation functions (ReLU), improvements in back-propagation algorithms with stochastic gradient descent. Also crude but effective network simplification methods were found useful (dropout). The big game changer was progress in GPUs though.
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And that is just my point. While my own research area is not really related, I have following AI research for now around 30 years and that is what I see.
Of course, people mistaking some one-shot implementation optimization for an "algorithmic advance" are just as common today as they were back then.
You graybeards are always missing it! (Score:1)
It doesn't matter whether or not these other people use the term "AI" in the same way that you do; you know what they're talking about: Advancements in machine-learning and neural-nets have created another opportunity for wealth creation and therefore investment.
If you insist on being such a pedant, you'll miss out on this development, too, just like all the other lucrative developments that have flown over the heads of you Slashdotting fools. No matter, though; the world doesn't care that you leave yoursel
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(Oh, but the way: You, too, are just an automation; at some point, automation becomes so complex that it is indistinguishable from "sentience".)
You can spread your religion-surrogate crap somewhere else please. There is no scientific basis to your claim.
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You probably don't have the time for the whole series but the first few minutes of the first should be enough.
In the first lecture of this series, Prof. Sapolsky asks (among some other questions) who believes in free will.
There seems to be a majority of people raising hands.
He raises a finger and promises that that's gonna change. ;)
Add to this, the fact that you are completely made of atoms. There is no evidence for any secret life-force so far.
True, the final verdict on t
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There is pretty strong evidence that we are hybrids. Quite a few things clearly run on automation, but some things do not. It takes an act of will to decide to "think about something" though and many people manage that only rarely. Of course, many people falsely assume that they are using free will all the time and even for trivial decisions, but that is just not true.
The problem here is that there is no mechanism for consciousness on physics and there is no known mechanism that can produce the intelligence
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In fact, after many decades of AI research, it looks like "strong AI" may actually not be possible physically in this universe.
Check back after many centuries of research.
Computer science is younger than many people alive today.
When you can use clairvoyance to predict what their descendants a dozen generations from now will achieve,
then you will have a reason for making such a baseless claim.
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(Oh, but the way: You, too, are just an automation; at some point, automation becomes so complex that it is indistinguishable from "sentience".)
You can spread your religion-surrogate crap somewhere else please. There is no scientific basis to your claim.
You appear to have it backwards. Nearly all if not all of our scientific knowledge points to humans being an automation just like any other robot, although much more complex and with fundamentally different hardware. Religion or religion-surrogates are the only source of belief to the contrary.
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(Oh, but the way: You, too, are just an automation; at some point, automation becomes so complex that it is indistinguishable from "sentience".)
You can spread your religion-surrogate crap somewhere else please. There is no scientific basis to your claim.
You appear to have it backwards. Nearly all if not all of our scientific knowledge points to humans being an automation just like any other robot, although much more complex and with fundamentally different hardware. Religion or religion-surrogates are the only source of belief to the contrary.
No, I do not. You are misinterpreting the Science. It actually says no such thing and the question is wide open. Now, I do not propose to put a "god" or any such nonsense in there (I am an atheist), but Physicalism is usually practiced and defended much the same way religion is. It is "obvious truth", and it assumes known Physics covers everything (when not even Physics makes such a claim and rather points out that it does not). People that do not buy it are accused of being religious (in the sense of "wron
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Except for the absence of a "god", Physicalism is religion. Similar variations of the religious meme have existed before, see, e.g. some variants of communism or national socialism. These are religions in all but name and about as well-funded on actual facts.
Without a god or some form of metaphysical beliefs, you cannot classify something as a religion. You can describe it as a philosophy, belief system, etc. but not a religion. Physicalism is by definition not a religion because it does not consist of metaphysical or supernatural claims.
Rather strong evidence to the contrary is completely ignored (the nature of consciousness is completely unknown, how intelligence works in a smart person is completely unknown and consciousness and real intelligence are _only_ observable together)
Consciousness and intelligence variability provide no evidence for the existence of any force/substance/etc we have not yet been able to measure. The very fact we do not understand the mechanism behind consciousness makes it ev
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Except for the absence of a "god", Physicalism is religion. Similar variations of the religious meme have existed before, see, e.g. some variants of communism or national socialism. These are religions in all but name and about as well-funded on actual facts.
Without a god or some form of metaphysical beliefs, you cannot classify something as a religion. You can describe it as a philosophy, belief system, etc. but not a religion. Physicalism is by definition not a religion because it does not consist of metaphysical or supernatural claims.
Of course I can. We can call is "quasi religion" or "religion surrogate", but it is basically the same thing. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it very likely is a duck, even if the color may be off.
Rather strong evidence to the contrary is completely ignored (the nature of consciousness is completely unknown, how intelligence works in a smart person is completely unknown and consciousness and real intelligence are _only_ observable together)
Consciousness and intelligence variability provide no evidence for the existence of any force/substance/etc we have not yet been able to measure. The very fact we do not understand the mechanism behind consciousness makes it evidence of nothing. If I don't understand something I surely cannot use it as evidence of something else. How one person can be smarter than another is no more mystical than how one person can be stronger than another, even though we don't yet know how to measure intelligence on a genetic / cellular / etc level. Every time society attributes mysticism to the boundaries of our scientific knowledge they have been wrong so far, so there is no reason to think it will be any different with consciousness.
And wrong again. The very fact that we do not understand what consciousness is provides a very strong indicator that our current theories are incomplete. It does not indicate they just need to be extended among known lines, as you seem to assume.
Right now science describes a world where humans are no different than another other complex system. We could surely find out we are wrong in the future, but nothing we can measure now suggests we are wrong.
It does not. This is a belief, not something Science
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It does not indicate they just need to be extended among known lines, as you seem to assume.
In the case of "known lines" being science, which of course is physical in nature (there's no such thing as non-physical evidence), yes we do have to extend along those lines.
An actual scientist does understand that.
How would you know?
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Physicalism is usually practiced and defended much the same way religion is.
Everything that benefits your life, including modern nutrition, medicine, transportation
and the computer you are typing on, all derive from one source: science.
Science, in turn, is based on evidence.
Evidence is based on objective measurements.
Measurements are necessarily physical in nature, because what would a "non-physical measurement" mean?
So we have:
No physicality -> no measurements.
No measurements -> no evidence.
No evidence -> no science.
No science -> superstitious twits like you.
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When the Media says "AI" they usually mean strong AI.
When scientists say "AI", they usually mean weak AI.
This confusion is why you get people like Bill Gates saying that AI is our biggest existential threat. The AI we're seeing today has nothing to do with existential threats. And if IBM tries to sell you Watson, it's just a marketing term, not the thing that won at Jeopardy.
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Oh, it is nice than I can buy a reasonable (hobbyist use only) 3D printer kit for $300 or so. Gives me something to tinker with. The whole bubble was just exceptionally stupid though.
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Exactly. I seem to recall quite a hype bubble about 3D printing. We were all going to drive 3D printed cars, printed right into the garage of our 3D printed houses.
Um, we have 3D printed cars [all3dp.com] and 3D printed houses [engadget.com]. Considering 3D printing hype arguably started in earnest in 2014 we are a decade or two away from being able to tell if it was all just hype. The 3D printing industry is still growing today and showing no signs of stopping.
Then it was private space. We were going to colonize the Galaxy because "the species", and technology always gets better.
I have not heard anything about companies such as SpaceX or Virgin Galactic pulling back on their commercial space travel ambitions.
Overall you seem to be just complaining about new technologies and industries with nothing to back it up.
Re:AI is not "exploding" (Score:5, Interesting)
There have been gradual speed-improvements, but they are, well, gradual.
Even with gradual speed improvements, you may reach a speed that represents a tipping point, where these processes go from taking an unacceptably long amount of time to taking an acceptably long amount of time.
When you hit a tipping point like that, usage and adoption might expand dramatically (even if not "explosively), regardless of whether there's been real innovation.
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Depends on what you call "fundamental". There are plenty of new ideas tried out. The number of research papers written on AI in the last couple of years eclipses all the papers that were written before that.
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Useless metric. The actual scientific advancement from these papers is a tiny faction of what was known before. Science is unfortunately not immune to hypes, but they do not produce much advancement.
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You can't make use of a tool without understanding how it works
I know next to nothing about the workings of the internal combustion engine, and yet somehow I manage to drive my car to work every morning.
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I fully agree to that. Well, mostly, as really understanding large training data sets is difficult. But using a tool without understanding its limits and where it can have surprising behavior is dangerous and extremely unprofessional.
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We announced the TPU last year and recently followed up with a detailed study of its performance and architecture. In short, we found that the TPU delivered 15–30X higher performance and 30–80X higher performance-per-watt than contemporary CPUs and GPUs.
I think that counts as a bit more than "gradual" speed improvement. And that was just the first generation. They've already made significant improvements in the second generation (45 TFLOPS/chip)
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Actually, it is a _lot_ less of an improvement than it sounds and it has very limited scalability. All these algorithms have sub-linear performance and a factor of 10 or even 100 may not give you anything substantially better.
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First, there is nothing besides weak AI (i.e. the "AI" with no "I", better called "automation"). Second, it is not "exploding". There have been no fundamental breakthroughs for quite a while. There have been gradual speed-improvements, but they are, well, gradual. The only thing that has been "exploding" is the hype about AI, i.e. this is nothing but a bubble of hot air.
Investors investing in hype instead of actually understanding technology, no way! That's never happened before or has it? Pets.com sock puppet anyone?
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That is why some will get rich (off other investors), even if there will not be any significant advances in products.
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That is why some will get rich (off other investors), even if there will not be any significant advances in products.
You think the "other investors" care about any sort of progress? Most of those investors are like patent trolls so I don't see your statement as any sort of problem whatsoever. Sounds like business as usual to me.
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I don't. I am criticizing the reporting here.
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That very much is it. Not the only hype going on, but one of the worst ones at the moment for sheer non-understanding.
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Well, maybe. As to an UBI, it is certainly feasible financially in some countries and maybe in a lot more, as it basically is a simplification of the welfare system. The most serious problem with it is that many people will not be able to live well with not having a job. It gives meaning, substance and structure. I think we will see riots and massively increased mental health issues when UBIs are implemented carelessly. Ultimately, there really is no other choice I can see, as automation (not AI) will take
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Here as some more recent advances
Turing Learning - https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ne... [sheffield.ac.uk]
Evolution Strategies - https://www.technologyreview.c... [technologyreview.com]
Bayesian Program Synthesis - https://techxplore.com/news [techxplore.com]
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Uh-huh (Score:3, Insightful)
Too bad 'AI' is just a fancy term for computing. :P This isn't any different than health startups or VR a few years ago, the rate at which VCs throw good money after bad chasing fads is insanity. in another few years it'll be something else, and AI will have been dropped like a hot rock by most of them. It's a new form of day trading: get in, profit off of the hype, get out. Though it lines their pockets nicely, it does nothing to help anyone or progress anything in a meaningful way, and it artificially inflates expectations. It could easily take the economy out again, eventually. The SEC is fast asleep.
Another AI Winter (Score:5, Interesting)
The expectations got totally out of control. Wow! A knowledge expert could write a set of rules so that an expert system could predict who is a bad credit risk! Etc. Of course, modern statistical approaches might be much better at that. But I use it as an example of having too great of expectations.
Like today, these modern statistical classifiers are amazing! But one day one of those statistical classifiers will mis-classify a pedestrian in front of a vehicle. Another possible way there could be wrong expectations is that both human beings and also managers might expect these systems to have some kind of insight or creativity. Or possibly deductive reasoning power (like the classic AI systems actually had, to a degree).
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> I remember the AI Winter of the late 1980's and early 1990's
oh god yes... I learnt Prolog and Caml in university, it was horrible :-/
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While I agree with the sentiment, the reality is that the dollar values are imaginary and translating from one imaginary context to another doesn't mean intuitive expectations would be met.
Since we love car analogies, if you had the labor and resources to produce one Lamborghini Aventador, you could not take those same resources to make 20 Toyota Corollas, even though the price difference suggests you could (400k vs. 20k).
It's still sad and unfair since, but not so easy to fix.
Glug glug blub pop (Score:2)
What's the connection between this and glug glub blub?
They both sound like a bubble.
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AI is a big threat to index funds and indexers. (Score:3)
At present active investors can't game index investors easily. The orders from traders for index funds get swamped out lost among the orders from actively managed fund traders. But with AI systems, it might learn to place a large buy order in a relatively thinly traded component of a large index, a few microseconds before selling a large lot of the index itself. How much to buy, how early to buy, what to buy, when to sell etc are not calculated deterministically by human traders. But AI might find the pattern and learn it.
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a few microseconds before selling a large lot of the index itself.
I've long thought this needs to be squashed. Sub-second trading granularity just isn't adding anything meaningful, but it causes crazy distorted and unfair trading practices. Something like shuffling transactions over a larger timescale that is more fair.
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lol microseconds you say? People doing HFT spend top $$$ to have nanosecond benefit on their 10/25/40/100Gig network, colocated in the same room as NASDAQ/NYSE servers
HFT and the polarized neutrino (Score:2)
It's extremely hard to create a batch clearance protocol (say, once per minute) where you don't create an information hazard where firm A arranges to receive a vital public stock press release a 0.1 ms before the cutoff time, while it's competitor receives the same press release 0.1 ms after the cutof
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I've so far only managed to come up with one proper solution: build a Ringworld.
How about a 1% tax on each transaction? That would slow things down.
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Pied Piper should pivot into AI too (Score:1)
AI ways to separate investors from their money (Score:3)
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Funny you should mention healthcare. So my friend went into "big data" after college. Hadoop mostly. Eventually worked at an insurance company. With a big enough set he could spot the similarities between the fraudsters and identify when someone was committing insurance fraud. You know, with a hit-miss rate. It was really just a tool to point the auditors in the right direction.
He could ALSO spot trends with people who got certain diagnosis's and certain tests as those who might have a particular dise
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But isn't what you describe just statistical analysis rather than actual AI? Data processing is not AI per se. However, I do agree with you that the consensus within Slashdot community seems to be that the only valid kind of AI is the one that gains self-awareness and start killing its creator.
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I don't know, there was a lot about the process he never told me. But if it ever starts to teach itself how to apply statistical analysis to the data set and identify "probable fraud" or "probable cancer" all by itself without a statistician in the loop, then it's AI. And my friend isn't a statistician.
My point was that there's actual real meaningful work with gains to be made in healthcare by software. Statistical analysis, big data, hadoop, AI, or whatever.
Slashdot community seems to be that the only valid kind of AI is the one that gains self-awareness
Yeah, good luck defining whateverthefuck that
Translation (Score:3, Insightful)
Please fund our bubble
AI Bubble (Score:2)
Same as Social Media Bubble.
Smart (Score:3)
What could possibly go wrong?