

Baidu’s Andrew Ng on Deep Learning and Innovation in Silicon Valley - avgn
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2014/11/21/baidus-andrew-ng-on-deep-learning-and-innovation-in-silicon-valley/

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malandrew
Having lived in China and experienced the Great Firewall of China firsthand,
I've always wondered what role Baidu and other firms like it play in
controlling the conversation and identifying dissidents. It would not surprise
me if Baidu plays a large role in not only in providing search like Google but
specifically tailoring those results to be inline with the content the Party
would like the people to see and uses it's crawling and machine learning
ability to identify dissidents.

This is of course speculative based on my own experience with the Firewall and
seeing the degree to which companies located within the PRC need to cooperate,
but it wouldn't surprise me if machine learning techniques are already used in
such a capacity. Does anyone here that know a lot more about Baidu have any
information supporting or refuting such speculation?

I know Google has already ventured into this territory with it's autocomplete
word blacklist[0] and modified results for terms like torrents.

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577513](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8577513)

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therobot24
> There are a lot of deep-learning startups. Unfortunately, deep learning is
> so hot today that there are startups that call themselves deep learning
> using a somewhat generous interpretation. It’s creating tons of value for
> users and for companies, but there’s also a lot of hype. We tend to say deep
> learning is loosely a simulation of the brain. That sound bite is so easy
> for all of us to use that it sometimes causes people to over-extrapolate to
> what deep learning is. The reality is it’s really very different than the
> brain. We barely (even) know what the human brain does.

100% agree. Needs to be said 100x more. What is one of the first things Ng
taught in his ML class? These methods are tools, but that doesn't mean every
problem requires a hammer. Because Deep Learning is getting press start-ups
think they need to use it. And i really doubt that most of the start-ups that
claim they are using it, are really using it properly.

It's at the point now that when i see a start-up claim they use deep learning
i flat out don't believe them.

~~~
agibsonccc
As someone building a deep learning platform as a startup[0], I do training
among many other things and some of the trends I have seen in this space are
that many aren't even familiar with what deep learning is good for, let alone
why they should use it or where the hype is coming from. If you want a good
explanation or 2 about deep learning, I would suggest a recent panel
discussion by some people brought together by gigaom (disclaimer I was one of
them)[2] as well as Andrew. What most people who try to sell you deep learning
won't tell you is how impractical the algorithms can be to use and train. If
you need that extra bit of accuracy, make sure you understand what you're
getting yourself in to.

[0]: [http://skymind.io/](http://skymind.io/)

[1]: [http://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/heres-what-you-missed-at-
gigaom...](http://gigaom.com/2014/09/22/heres-what-you-missed-at-gigaoms-
future-of-ai-meetup/)

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Wogef
>Large parts of China are still a developing economy. If you’re illiterate,
you can’t type, so enabling users to speak to us is critical for helping them
find information.

Baidu needs voice search because so many Chinese are illiterate? WTF! This is
an incredibly bizarre statement.

He's suggesting there are a significant number of Mainland Chinese users who
speak Mandarin good enough for machine transcription- but are illiterate?
Anyone who has lived in China for a significant amount of time can tell you
that's just not plausible.

The people who have poor reading skills (in ten years I have never met any
completely illiterate Chinese) generally only speak their provincial dialect.
Last check only 53% of Chinese can communicate in Mandarin, while only 5% are
illiterate. The overlap is nearly non-existent.

I think Ng picked up a bit of Singaporean bias during his time there- it
certianly seems he has spent no time on the Mainland.

~~~
cadamsau
Hi Wogef,

Sorry to bother you (and everyone else) on this thread. I'm interested in
visiting Shenzhen and would like to meet up. I tried to reach you on the email
on your profile but it didn't work. Are you able to reach out on the email in
my profile?

Regards,

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valgaze
Watch Ng at 57 minutes discuss the "cocktail party" problem and present an
amazing solution:
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E&t=57m0s](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UzxYlbK2c7E&t=57m0s)

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phatak-dev
His course on ML made me interested in ML field and drew to coursera.

