[ian-lewis]

* Disclosure: I work for Google with the OP, and sit next to him in Japan.

"2. Google dispatched their solutions architect to work with them."

That's not what happened at all. He built the system entirely himself before getting in contact with us.

I think that while very complex machine learning tasks do require specific knowledge, creating a neural network that can do real work is within the abilities a single individual.

[ktamura]

>That's not what happened at all. He built the system entirely himself before getting in contact with us.

Good to know. While what I said was meant to be hypothetical, I am happy to stand corrected.

>creating a neural network that can do real work is within the abilities a single individual.

This really depends on said "individual." My biggest issue was the tacit conflation between two themes, one valid and another reeking of "feel good" marketing:

1. That a reasonably technical person can use neutral network to do useful things, no small part thanks to something like TensorFlow (valid)

2. That such individuals are prevalent in agriculture (???)

I am all for hero-making: it's at the heart of marketing and customer advocacy. However, as someone who has been doing technical marketing for awhile, I just find this story exceptional in both senses of the word (as others commented, perhaps I turn out to be wrong!)

[ian-lewis]

That's fair. As the reader you can be the judge.

Advocacy is partly about inspiring others and I think this does that while presenting an accurate representation of what the farmer was able to accomplish.

[franciscop]

ktamura is not saying that happened, is saying that if that happened it would be more real than the current one. The current one (while true) looks like a TensorFlow advertising, making it sound easier than it really is.

[ian-lewis]

Sure. It's just that we can't make it more genuine or plausible by writing it that way because it's not true.