> Working at a startup does not make you an expert. Especially when your opinion goes against what pretty much everyone else in the field thinks.
Achievements are perhaps the best yardstick for expertise. Whether a person has worked at a startup or has contrarian viewpoints are both irrelevant.
Gary Marcus was co-founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, successfully raised some money and grew a team, [1] then successfully sold the company to Uber, after which he directed Uber's AI lab. He has a PhD from MIT in cognitive science. And he's been a professor of Neural Science at NYU for nearly 20 years. [2]
"Especially when your opinion goes against what pretty much everyone else in the field thinks" -> Most Deep learning people are consumers or hardware manufacturers, very few researchers in the field, and most people that have deep knowledge of it would agree with this guy.
Achievements are perhaps the best yardstick for expertise. Whether a person has worked at a startup or has contrarian viewpoints are both irrelevant.
Gary Marcus was co-founder and CEO of Geometric Intelligence, successfully raised some money and grew a team, [1] then successfully sold the company to Uber, after which he directed Uber's AI lab. He has a PhD from MIT in cognitive science. And he's been a professor of Neural Science at NYU for nearly 20 years. [2]
I'm no expert, but he seems like one to me.
[1] https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/geometric-intelligen... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/in/gary-marcus-b6384b4/