Two Nobel Prizes for AI, and Two Paths Forward
We recorded 7 claims from this post. 1 was checked against evidence. 6 can’t be checked. 5 more are held. Read the post at its source.
Claims from this post (7)
In the order they appear in the post. Each quotation is the speaker’s words in this post. A label such as “Supported” or “Can’t be checked” is the claim’s current assessment; its page has the evidence and the reasons.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Observation
“Hinton has certainly had a profound influence on machine learning, but it’s still not entirely clear what he specifically won the prize for, or how that has advanced physics.”
Our reading: Hinton has certainly had a profound influence on machine learning, but it is still not entirely clear what he specifically won the physics Nobel Prize for, or how that work has advanced physics.
No horizon
Qualifier: not entirely clear
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“People will probably be asking questions about this particular award for a long time.”
Our reading: People will probably keep questioning Hinton's Nobel award for a long time.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“Hassabis’s win (shared with DeepMind researcher John Jumper), in contrast, is a slam dunk.”
Our reading: Unlike Hinton's prize, the chemistry Nobel won by Hassabis and shared with John Jumper is a slam dunk, meaning clearly deserved.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“AlphaFold is a huge contribution to both chemistry and biology. It arguably still hasn’t lived up to the extreme hype that I have sometimes seen, but it’s a fantastic contribution, used widely by biologists, and in my mind one of the two biggest contributions of AI to date, if not the biggest.”
Our reading: AlphaFold is a huge, fantastic contribution to both chemistry and biology and is used widely by biologists. It arguably still has not lived up to the extreme hype Marcus has sometimes seen. In his mind it is one of the two biggest contributions of AI to date, if not the biggest.
No horizon
Qualifier: in my mind
Assessment: UnresolvedSaid
Observation
“But the anti-neurosymbolic tradition is limited; its most visible manifestation, LLMs, has brought fame and money, but no robust solution to solving any particular problem with great reliability.”
Our reading: The anti-neurosymbolic tradition is limited. Its most visible manifestation, LLMs, has brought fame and money but no robust solution to solving any particular problem with great reliability.
No horizon Evidence as of
Limitation: High accuracy is evidence of useful capability and should not be dismissed merely because errors remain.
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Recommendation or value judgment
“It’s time for a new approach, and Hassabis sees that.”
Our reading: The AI field should move to a new approach beyond pure end-to-end neural networks, as Hassabis recognises.
No horizon
Assessment: Can’t be checkedSaid
Forecast
“His open-mindedness will serve the field well.”
Our reading: Hassabis's open-mindedness will serve the AI field well.
No horizon
Held from this post (5)
These records did not pass every check, so nothing about them is published. Held is not a finding.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: Hinton did not invent back-propagation, even though the Nobel citation seems to say he won for it.
- The two reviews reached different assessments. Our reading, not assessed: AlphaFold2 does not go directly from sequence to 3D structure with a single massive neural network, as the end-to-end tradition might attempt. It is considerably more structured, with a custom-built neural network embedded in quite a lot of classical symbolic machinery for information integration and search tools.
- The criteria are ambiguous. Our reading, not assessed: As far as Marcus can tell, the AlphaFold chemistry Nobel is the first Nobel Prize for neurosymbolic AI.
- The record does not meet the current rules. Our reading, not assessed: LLMs remain opaque, plagued by hallucinations and bone-headed errors, and extremely greedy for electricity, water, and data.
- The two reviews read the claim differently