HN Theater @HNTheaterMonth

As pointed out in [1], it seems machine learning takes the same path as physics already did. In the mid-20th century there was a "break" in physics, before individuals were making ground breaking discoveries in their private/personal labs (think Newton, Maxwell, Curie, Roentgen, Planck, Einstein, and many others) later huge collaborations (LHC/CERN, Icecube, EHT, et al.) are required, since the machinery, simulations, models are so complex, that groups of people are needed to create, comprehend and use them.

1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiD-9MMpb0 Lex Fridman podcast with Andrej Karpathy

P.S. To counteract that (unintentionally actually, likely because of a simple optimization of instruments' duty cycle) in astronomy people come up with a concept of "observatory" (Like Hubble, JWST) instead of "experiment" (like LHC, HESS telescopes) where outside people can submit their proposals, and if selected get observational time. Along with raw data authors of the proposals get required expertise from the collaboration to process and analyze that data.

Some well-known devs like Guido van Rossum and Andrej Karpathy are big fans as well [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=8723

⬐ throwaway2037

Please remember that Guido van Rossum is now employed by Microsoft. Yes, I am a fan of Guido van Rossum and his work, but I am always suspicious when famous people recommend their own company's products. It feels like excellent marketing/PR that is hard to resist.

⬐ arcturus17

What about Karpathy, nobody pays him in principle.

If you want to get an idea, why not listen to some engineers that have worked with him? There are plenty of those around, for example, Andrej Karpathy talked a bit about working with Elon recently - https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=5668

⬐ HWR_14

Unless it was off the record, I wouldn't. There are all kinds of potential conflicts of interests. These include ownership in companies where valuation is directly connected to Musk'a perceived competence and his ability to help/hinder their career.

⬐ nverno

Andrej doesn't work at Tesla anymore, but it sounded like he would want to leave the option to return open, so presumably he wouldn't want to burn bridges. I think most people prefer not to criticize people they know well publicly, anyhow.

Andrej Karpathy was recently on Lex Fridman's podcast and covered this to some extent. He has the same perspective on this topic and expanded on it quite a bit. Great listen overall IMHO - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cdiD-9MMpb0

I like his idea of finding 0-days in physics. :)

⬐ jstx1

At 1:03:30 - https://youtu.be/cdiD-9MMpb0?t=3810

> I think there's definitely scope in building a better search engine today. Google have all the tools, all the people, (...) all the data, it's just not obvious that they're capable as an organization to innovate on their search engine right now, and if they don't, someone else will. There's absolutely scope to build a better search engine based on these tools.