I did not intend to attack Gary or so in any way. But I realize that my statement is probably too strong. Of course it's not the whole AI community. My intention with my post was just to give some perspective, some background for people who have not heard about Gary Marcus before.
Maybe I'm also in a bubble, but I was speaking mostly about the people I frequently read from, i.e. lots of people from Google Brain, DeepMind, other people who frequently publish on NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc. Among those people, Gary is usually not taken seriously. At least that was my impression.
But let's not make this so much about Gary: Most of these people disagree with the opinion that Gary shares, i.e. they don't really see such a big need for symbolic AI, or they see much more potential in pure neural approaches (after all, the human brain is fully neural).
>> Of course it's not the whole AI community. My intention with my post was just to give some perspective, some background for people who have not heard about Gary Marcus before.
Yes, I get it. And the perspective you wanted to give was to not take Marcus seriously because the people you follow on social media say he's not to be taken seriously. That's nothing but a form of collective online bullying that attacks the person and not the opinion, and like I say in my other comment above, shameful.
Consider for a moment the impression that you make when you say that some people you know, when they're not publishing on NeurIPS, are on social media dogpiling on someone who criticises their work. That's not researchers any more, but common social media trolls.
>> But let's not make this so much about Gary: Most of these people disagree with the opinion that Gary shares, i.e. they don't really see such a big need for symbolic AI, or they see much more potential in pure neural approaches (after all, the human brain is fully neural).
To my experience, the majority of neural net researchers don't know anything concrete about symbolic AI, just what they have heard second-hand, usually on social media again, usually by people who disagree with Marcus, who's the most famous proponent of neuro-symbolic AI (NeSy). So whatever opinion they have on NeSy is not an informed opinion.
There's plenty of literature on NeSy which is a bona fide field of research with a conference etc. This year Leslie Valiant was the keynote speaker and Yan LeCun the honoured guest:
You really don't have to listen to what Marcus says to form an opinion on NeSy. Btw, I am not with them and I think they're going the wrong way, but at least I know what they're doing. That is much less than can be said about most neural net researchers, who rarely know anything outside their own work besides whatever preprint is trending on X. That's to the detriment of nobody but themselves.
> Consider for a moment the impression that you make when you say that some people you know, when they're not publishing on NeurIPS, are on social media dogpiling on someone who criticises their work. That's not researchers any more, but common social media trolls.
Twitter for the past decade plus has really publicized and amplified these petty, close-minded academic cliques. It's pretty disgusting to watch for someone who was also a PhD student eyeing an academic career once.
Yes, this kind of behaviour is keeping people away from research, except for the ones who are fine with it which of course ends up encouraging the bad behaviour. I'm sorry to see the disappointment evident in your comment.
Maybe I'm also in a bubble, but I was speaking mostly about the people I frequently read from, i.e. lots of people from Google Brain, DeepMind, other people who frequently publish on NeurIPS, ICLR, ICML, etc. Among those people, Gary is usually not taken seriously. At least that was my impression.
But let's not make this so much about Gary: Most of these people disagree with the opinion that Gary shares, i.e. they don't really see such a big need for symbolic AI, or they see much more potential in pure neural approaches (after all, the human brain is fully neural).