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Thanks! HN was part of the origin story of the book in question. In 2018 or 2019 I saw a comment here that said that most people don't appreciate the distincti

Thanks! HN was part of the origin story of the book in question. In 2018 or 2019 I saw a comment here that said that most people don't appreciate the distinction between domains with low irreducible error that benefit from fancy models with complex decision boundaries (like computer vision) and domains with high irreducible error where such models don't add much value over something simple like logistic regression. It's an obvious-in-retrospect observation, but it made me realize that this is the source of a lot of confusion and hype about AI (such as the idea that we can use it to predict crime accurately). I gave a talk elaborating on this point, which went viral, and then led to the book with my coauthor Sayash Kapoor. More surprisingly, despite being seemingly obvious it led to a productive research agenda. While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it.

CamperBob2 1y ago
It's hard to miss the similarity between your book's title and Cliff Stoll's 1995 Silicon Snake Oil, an indictment of the general concept of the "information superhighway" that was starting to resonate with the public. Stoll is a really smart guy, but that particular book hasn't held up too well: Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. (excerpted from the Amazon summary at https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information/dp/0385419937 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Informatio... ). So, was this something that you guys were conscious of when you chose your own book's title? How well have you future-proofed your central thesis?
- randomwalker 1y ago
  Yes, we're aware! Fortunately our book is not a broad indictment of AI :) And none of our claims are premised on tasks people can do remaining out of reach for AI. More here: https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writing https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writi... Our more recent essay (and ongoing book project) "AI as Normal Technology" is about our vision of AI impacts over a longer timescale than "AI Snake Oil" looks at https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology I would categorize our views as techno-optimist, but people understand that term in many different ways, so you be the judge.
- rhetocj23 1y ago
  [flagged]
dang 1y ago
> While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it. Sounds like a job for the community! Maybe someone will track it down... Edit: I tried something like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1514764800&page=1&prefix=true&query=domains%20error&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&... (note the custom date range) but didn't find anything that quite matches your description.
- z2 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 This was from 2017, and it made such an impression on me that I could find it on my first search attempt!
  - ontouchstart 1y ago
    “… machine learning everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a complex structure and low noise, and statistics everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a large amount of noise.”
- ontouchstart 1y ago
  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182
NooneAtAll3 1y ago
what does irreducible error mean?
- silverpiranha 1y ago
  [dead]
- mikepalmer 1y ago
  And how do you know it's irreducible? In the sense of knowing there's no short program to describe it (Kolmogorov style).

CamperBob2 1y ago

It's hard to miss the similarity between your book's title and Cliff Stoll's 1995 Silicon Snake Oil, an indictment of the general concept of the "information superhighway" that was starting to resonate with the public. Stoll is a really smart guy, but that particular book hasn't held up too well: Few aspects of daily life require computers...They're irrelevant to cooking, driving, visiting, negotiating, eating, hiking, dancing, speaking, and gossiping. You don't need a computer to...recite a poem or say a prayer." Computers can't, Stoll claims, provide a richer or better life. (excerpted from the Amazon summary at https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Information/dp/0385419937 https://www.amazon.com/Silicon-Snake-Oil-Thoughts-Informatio... ). So, was this something that you guys were conscious of when you chose your own book's title? How well have you future-proofed your central thesis?

randomwalker 1y ago
Yes, we're aware! Fortunately our book is not a broad indictment of AI :) And none of our claims are premised on tasks people can do remaining out of reach for AI. More here: https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writing https://www.normaltech.ai/p/faq-about-the-book-and-our-writi... Our more recent essay (and ongoing book project) "AI as Normal Technology" is about our vision of AI impacts over a longer timescale than "AI Snake Oil" looks at https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology https://www.normaltech.ai/p/ai-as-normal-technology I would categorize our views as techno-optimist, but people understand that term in many different ways, so you be the judge.
rhetocj23 1y ago
[flagged]

dang 1y ago

> While writing the book I spent a lot of time searching for that comment so that I could credit/thank the author, but never found it. Sounds like a job for the community! Maybe someone will track it down... Edit: I tried something like https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&dateStart=1514764800&page=1&prefix=true&query=domains%20error&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateEnd=1577836800&dateRange=custom&... (note the custom date range) but didn't find anything that quite matches your description.

z2 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14944613 This was from 2017, and it made such an impression on me that I could find it on my first search attempt!
- ontouchstart 1y ago
  “… machine learning everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a complex structure and low noise, and statistics everything that focuses on dealing with problems with a large amount of noise.”
ontouchstart 1y ago
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20010182

NooneAtAll3 1y ago

what does irreducible error mean?

silverpiranha 1y ago
[dead]
mikepalmer 1y ago
And how do you know it's irreducible? In the sense of knowing there's no short program to describe it (Kolmogorov style).