
AI researchers allege that machine learning is alchemy - kbwt
http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2018/05/ai-researchers-allege-machine-learning-alchemy?rs=1
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haZard_OS
>For starters, he says, researchers should conduct "ablation studies" like
those done with the translation algorithm: deleting parts of an algorithm one
at a time to see the function of each component. He calls for "sliced
analysis," in which an algorithm's performance is analyzed in detail to see
how improvement in some areas might have a cost elsewhere.

...wait a minute. ML researchers don't already do this?!

Forgive me if I come across as arrogant or naive; I am a scientist but not in
the ML field. I just can't fathom ANY field of research in which this very
basic approach isn't followed.

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nabla9
This has happened few times before. First comes some scientific understanding
then it devolves into tinkering, "look what I got".

Renaming parts of machine learning as Computational learning theory was an
attempt to distance the research from tinkering that produced AI winters.
Leslie Valiant, Vladimir Vapnik and Alexey Chervonenkis produced new insight
and new algorithms were produced.

Then Deep Learning stated to work again. Small scientific insights are
shadowed by the massive amount of progress that comes with tinkering with
parameters.

