I'm tired of the Norvig vs. Chomsky style debates about what is cognition/intelligence/learning. I think this piece does rehash that debate somewhat, but it's not at all the focus.
It's key contributions are about the mainstream domination of quantitative vs. qualitative methods, especially in this paragraph:
> Quantitative disciplines are notorious for incinerating the qualitative elements on the basis that they can’t be subjected to mathematical analysis. What’s left behind is a quantitative residue of dubious value… but at least you can do math with it. It’s the statistical equivalent to looking for your keys under a streetlight because it’s too dark where you dropped them.
and also of note is the "veneer of empirical facewash that provides plausible deniability", for discrimination, and for doing a poor job but continuing to be rewarded for it.
If I had to summarize it would be:
- The ML/AI community, which includes the researchers, practitioners, and the evangelists, are broadly utopian in what they think they can achieve. They are overconfident even in the domain of detecting the face of potential burglars in a home security camera, never mind in terms of creating new life with AGI. I think Doctorow's critique equally applies to "algorithms" even only as complex as a fancy Excel sheet, but he focuses on ML/AI as the most common source of this excess of optimism, that recording data and running it through a model is almost certainly the _most sensible thing to do_ for any given problem.
- If there is a manufactured consensus that the almost purely quantitative approach is the _most sensible thing to do_, then any failures or short-comings can be hand-waved away. Say sorry, "the model/algorithm did it", and just ignore the issue or apply a minor manual fix. This is a huge benefit for decision-makers wishing to maintain their status/livelihoods in both the public and private sector. Crucially, this excuse works if you're just ineffective, or if you're a bad actor.
Note that this is a critique of CEOs and government officials, more than of engineers -- we would only be complicit by association. If there is a critique for engineers, it's that we provide fodder for the excess of optimism in summary point 1 because we love playing with our tools, and that we allow ourselves to be the scapegoat for summary point 2.
It's key contributions are about the mainstream domination of quantitative vs. qualitative methods, especially in this paragraph:
> Quantitative disciplines are notorious for incinerating the qualitative elements on the basis that they can’t be subjected to mathematical analysis. What’s left behind is a quantitative residue of dubious value… but at least you can do math with it. It’s the statistical equivalent to looking for your keys under a streetlight because it’s too dark where you dropped them.
and also of note is the "veneer of empirical facewash that provides plausible deniability", for discrimination, and for doing a poor job but continuing to be rewarded for it.
If I had to summarize it would be:
- The ML/AI community, which includes the researchers, practitioners, and the evangelists, are broadly utopian in what they think they can achieve. They are overconfident even in the domain of detecting the face of potential burglars in a home security camera, never mind in terms of creating new life with AGI. I think Doctorow's critique equally applies to "algorithms" even only as complex as a fancy Excel sheet, but he focuses on ML/AI as the most common source of this excess of optimism, that recording data and running it through a model is almost certainly the _most sensible thing to do_ for any given problem.
- If there is a manufactured consensus that the almost purely quantitative approach is the _most sensible thing to do_, then any failures or short-comings can be hand-waved away. Say sorry, "the model/algorithm did it", and just ignore the issue or apply a minor manual fix. This is a huge benefit for decision-makers wishing to maintain their status/livelihoods in both the public and private sector. Crucially, this excuse works if you're just ineffective, or if you're a bad actor.
Note that this is a critique of CEOs and government officials, more than of engineers -- we would only be complicit by association. If there is a critique for engineers, it's that we provide fodder for the excess of optimism in summary point 1 because we love playing with our tools, and that we allow ourselves to be the scapegoat for summary point 2.