
The Deep Mind of Demis Hassabis - sinwave
https://medium.com/backchannel/the-deep-mind-of-demis-hassabis-156112890d8a
======
keithpeter
This article is part 4 of a series by Steven Levy about Google research. I
rather like Levy's writing so I wanted to find parts 1, 2, 3 as well.

The navigation to earlier parts of the series seems broken to me
(Iceweasel/Debian Sid/noscript set to allow page) so I backed up to the front
page and found the links...

Part 1

[https://medium.com/backchannel/how-google-search-dealt-
with-...](https://medium.com/backchannel/how-google-search-dealt-with-
mobile-33bc09852dc9)

Part 2

[https://medium.com/backchannel/googles-secret-study-to-
find-...](https://medium.com/backchannel/googles-secret-study-to-find-out-our-
needs-eba8700263bf)

Part 3

[https://medium.com/backchannel/google-search-will-be-your-
ne...](https://medium.com/backchannel/google-search-will-be-your-next-
brain-5207c26e4523)

Part 4

[https://medium.com/backchannel/the-deep-mind-of-demis-
hassab...](https://medium.com/backchannel/the-deep-mind-of-demis-
hassabis-156112890d8a)

------
rokhayakebe
I do not have a GPS, most of my friends do. I notice something with everyone
who has a GPS when I am with them: they cannot find their way back. They have
to use the tool again.

Why am I saying this? I do not know whether these technologies are making
people smarter or less smart. It certainly helps to have something that can
help do the tasks you just would not be able to do on your own without much
toiling, however I think a lot about the day when your AI enabled digital
assistant makes every single decision for you.

~~~
CmonDev
It's a perception problem. GPS is an artificial organ that happens to reside
outside of your brain at this stage of evolution. Most people have to use
vision as well, they cannot just use their old trusty sense of smell to get
around. So what it's biological?

~~~
sumitviii
Saying that we are now controlling the evolution (in biological sense) is
incorrect.

------
sdrothrock
The banner is really frustrating. It says "Part 4" and has four dots, but I
can't click the dots to go back to Part 1 and there aren't any header links to
Part 1... is there even a Part 1 to go to?

~~~
bhaumik
parts 1-3 linked at bottom of the post.

Part 1: [https://medium.com/p/33bc09852dc9](https://medium.com/p/33bc09852dc9)

------
CmonDev
He is yet to produce something useful. Why celebrate him now? Google PR?

~~~
bsaul
That was also my feeling, and i have it pretty much every time i hear about
"deep learning" : it's all PR and people trying to get as much funding as they
can while the trend is hot. I have a suscipicion that it will all collapse
like a bubble once again.

The only thing that really impressed me so far was that ibm computer playing
jeopardy, but the fact that no other application became public after all this
years make me wonder if once again all people built was a manually tuned
specialized system.

Note : i'm not in the field so my feelings are just based on the communication
around the subject and decades of claims about building an intelligent
algorithm with no success.

~~~
kylebrown
Deep Mind Atari demo -
[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGD2qveGdQ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfGD2qveGdQ)

~~~
bsaul
Do we know what reenforcement method they used ? Did the training on one level
of breakout had the algorithm perform well on other levels of the same game
without any new training ?

Did those games had any kind of random behavior or does the same things happen
all the time at the same time ?

It is a progress, i agree, but all those games are just about issueing
sequences of "left right" commands to maximize the time spent playing the
game.

Things would be a lot different if they could somehow analyze the structure of
the network's "conceptual" layer to identify functions over areas ( like "
this is where ball trajectory is identified, and we can see it rest and
activate depending on the ball's motion" or something similar). But the slide
on his presentation shows a big question mark there, which isn't really
reassuring.

