[pdimitar]

> There are many forthcoming breakthroughs... We just need to build...

Not sure how you don't see the irony. This has probably been said thousands of times for many scientific areas throughout history. Example:

There are forthcoming breakthroughs in humanity being an interstellar civilization. We just need to build faster-than-light engines and terraforming equipment. Nothing major, right?

[unityByFreedom]

> There are forthcoming breakthroughs in humanity being an interstellar civilization. We just need to build faster-than-light engines and terraforming equipment. Nothing major, right?

Building a dataset is easy and not something you would compare to faster-than-light engines. Believe it or not, some major breakthroughs are held back by simple lack of funding, and lack of awareness.

To make a dataset you need to pay radiologists to label enough data for the system to do its job well. This could be thousands, or hundreds of thousands of images. It is technically speaking very doable, but also very expensive. Then there are data privacy issues stopping you from sharing data. These are social issues, not engineering issues.

[pdimitar]

Your reply, while overall correct, still underestimates the problem of "how do we invent AI?". Data-sets shouldn't be "tuned" or "refined" (tems I see in practically every "AI" article); if they need to be remade then the consumer is not only not AI -- it's not even a clever NN implementation.

Forgive my cynicism if you can, but in my eyes you guys just support what might make you money one day (or already does) and thus aren't objective. You're like the parents that are completely blind to their child's defects due to paternal / maternal hormones.

There's no AI on this planet. There are not even beginnings of an AI. Deep learning is practically a statistically biased classification algorithm and not much else.

To me the term AI is being abused. I want AI to exist, but I am seeing every indication that the area is falling victim to capitalistic interests and this won't change anytime soon.

[unityByFreedom]

> Your reply, while overall correct, still underestimates the problem of "how do we invent AI?"

I'm not talking about building a real AI.

I actually agree with you that we're nowhere near developing that. Not sure where you got any other idea from me.

I'm saying there are some machine learning problems that could be served by some simple data entry. This could save lives, including yours and mine, via advanced cancer detection [1]

You're right that since I studied data science, I'm incentivized to advertise its usefulness. But, I studied data science because I believe it is a growing part of our future.

You can try it yourself too. There are many tutorials online. Making use of machine learning gets easier every year.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/03/12/technology/enlitic-technolog...

[pdimitar]

I would gladly take the time, if only I had some. :(

Thank you for your kind answer.

[michaelmrose]

There is pretty good reason to suppose faster than light travel is impossible. Aside from our current understanding of physics there is also the question of where all the aliens are.

If FTL is possible one could see even one intelligent species possessed of such technology spreading over the galaxy over thousands of years. It would also seem decidedly odd to suppose that if faster than light is possible only we are smart enough to invent it.

Removing faster than light travel doesn't remove the question of where are all the aliens but it sure does make it easier to swallow.

[pdimitar]

All true.

(My opinion on where are all the aliens is that collectively speaking, we're little more than ordinary jungle beasts with baseball caps (quote by George Carlin) and we're monitored and evaluated on when is a good time for a first contact. Let's just say we're easily at least a millennia away from that point.)

My point in my parent comment was that the overall schema of assertions like "breakthroughs are incoming" and "we just need to do X" are overly optimistic. So I gave an exaggerated example to demonstrate that point.