
Rocket AI: 2016’s Most Notorious AI Launch and the Problem with AI Hype - jjwiseman
https://medium.com/the-mission/rocket-ai-2016s-most-notorious-ai-launch-and-the-problem-with-ai-hype-d7908013f8c9
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murbard2
Highly respected AI researchers who were in on the joke publicly praised it.
VCs are not idiots for showing interest given the circumstances. If they
aren't going to judge AI startups by the opinion of world-class experts, how
exactly are they expected to judge them?

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zo7
Maybe the fact that RocketAI didn't have a product, wasn't solving any
problem, or was touting a bogus algorithm with absolutely zero details
should've set off some flags. They didn't base their interest off of any value
they were creating, it was just unsubstantiated hype.

~~~
crdb
The filter for relevance for investment that has overwhelmingly survived in
the market is social proof ("warm intros") for a reason: it's substantially
more expensive and harder to fake third party signals (including their own
quality) than your own.

Why did Google beat all the search directories? The latter used keywords on
pages to figure out relevance, which was easily gamed by sites putting up
thousands of keywords. Google weighed (still weighs) both the number of links
and the quality of each referrer. The SEO vs search relevance war continues to
this day, but PageRank gives Google a long term advantage.

The attractiveness of an investment has many variables with the two most
important team quality and traction. Many VCs are on record saying they'll
fund a pre-product company if the team is worth it.

If a number of high quality referrers are recommending the team, then the team
quality variable might override the others. The hype's _substance_ here was
the referrer quality.

~~~
koja86
What exactly is the advantage given by PageRank today?

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willis77
> A machine learning researcher, a crypto-currency expert, and an Erlang
> programmer walk into a bar. Facebook buys the bar for $27 billion.

[https://twitter.com/ml_hipster/status/438418306769244160](https://twitter.com/ml_hipster/status/438418306769244160)

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epalmer
I'm about as far away from AI and a developer can be. I found this article to
be a fun read. When there is hype, there is really hype.

This should be a lesson to journalist, fan boys/girls and VC. Pay attention to
reality.

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paulmd
And here I would have thought that Tay was 2016's most notorious AI launch...

(RIP 3/23/2016 nevar forget, #taken3soon)

~~~
vtange
Tay wasn't known for how it acted once launched though, it was notorious for
what it was vulnerable to/ what it learned after launch.

~~~
paulmd
Tay was only online for a grand total of about 16 hours. I'm sure she was a
very sweet, innocent chatbot for the first five minutes, though.

[http://i.imgur.com/QYvM2kp.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QYvM2kp.jpg)

 _" 1998 – The untested AI is activated for the first time as one of the
planned activities on Aperture’s first annual bring-your-daughter-to-work day.
In many ways, the initial test goes well: Within one picosecond of being
switched on, GLaDOS becomes self-aware. The "going well" phase lasts for two
more picoseconds, at which point GLaDOS takes control of the facility, locks
everyone inside, and begins a permanent cycle of testing."_

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paulgb
I am sure AI is over hyped, but I think this is more of a demonstration of how
if you provide people with booze and a venue you can get them to attend
anything. A lot of the social media response reads as tongue-in-cheek.

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thomyorkie
For VCs who focus on AI, I think it would actually be irresponsible if they
didn't show interest in a start up that was garnering so much praise from AI
experts. Its not as if term sheets were sent.

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pbiggar
It also wouldn't be irresponsible to send term sheets - the fact that the
company doesn't exist will come out in due diligence pretty quickly.

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AndrewKemendo
While I appreciate the trolling, it just feels like people in general are
abusing the most important idea in the history of humanity.

Exploring the possible early components (DRN, GAN) that could lead
cumulatively to AGI is not a joke. It's going to be more powerful than nuclear
or bio weapons. Are those funny?

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madenine
I used a combination of networks to turn news articles into memes.

I guess I should apologize for not respecting how news2meme could be a
stepping stone to AGI, and promise to be more austere in the future.

You don't even want to know what I'm doing with Reinforcement learning and
flappy bird.

~~~
AndrewKemendo
No those are great uses. Creativity in satire is a necessary trait. My problem
is with people who say and then reinforce the idea that AI is just hope it's
disrespectful to people who are really working on it.

~~~
jgalt212
Yes, we must create safe spaces for these people to ply their trade.

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Eliezer
I'm reading this thinking, "Wait, why is _Anders_ introducing this
algorithm... Oh."

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randcraw
If you like Borat, RocketAI and this author are for you.

But for me, it's just Jumping The Snark.

