{"id":161,"date":"2017-06-23T15:02:32","date_gmt":"2017-06-23T19:02:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dwan.org\/?p=161"},"modified":"2019-10-25T15:17:25","modified_gmt":"2019-10-25T19:17:25","slug":"the-game-of-kings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/2017\/06\/23\/the-game-of-kings\/","title":{"rendered":"The game of kings"},"content":{"rendered":"

A very smart and well informed colleague recently shared a thought that disturbed me. I\u2019m writing it here mostly to get it out of my head, and also in the hopes that the eminently quotable<\/a> Admiral Rickover<\/a> will once again be proved right: \u201cWeaknesses overlooked in oral discussion become painfully obvious on the written page.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the observation: Machine learning and Artificial Intelligence are become a game of kings. The field is now the competitive arena for the likes of Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Facebook, and IBM. When companies of this scale compete, they do so with teams of thousands of people and spend (in aggregate) billions of dollars. The people on these teams are not a uniform sampling of their industry, they are the elite \u2013 high level professionals with the freedom to be choosy about their jobs.<\/p>\n

The claim is that this presents an insurmountable barrier of entry to anyone who is not on one of those teams. Prosaically, when the King\u2019s Hunt is afield, those of us without the resources of a king are well advised to stay out of the way.<\/p>\n

In his words: \u201cIf you want to have an impact in AI or ML, the only real choice is which of the billionaires you want to work for.\u201d Further, if you want to use<\/i> these technologies, the only real choice is which billionaire to buy from.<\/p>\n

I find this to be depressing, but not necessarily flawed. It would be easy (and potentially even more accurate) to make the same argument about computational infrastructure in the age of public exascale clouds.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also an insulting subtext to the argument: If you are working with or on ML and AI and are not<\/i> working for or with a billionaire, your work is de-facto pointless. Further, all the most talented people are flocking to join the King\u2019s teams \u2013 maybe it\u2019s just that you didn\u2019t make the cut?<\/p>\n

Did I mention that this particular colleague works part-time for Google? It reminds me of the joke about Crossfit: \u201cHow do you tell that somebody does crossfit? Oh don\u2019t worry, they\u2019ll tell you.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

With all that said, I don\u2019t buy it. I fall back on Margaret Mead\u2019s famous quote: \u201cNever doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it\u2019s the only thing that ever has.\u201d<\/i><\/p>\n

I harbor a deep-seated optimism about people. Everywhere I go, individuals and small teams absolutely sparkle with creativity and intelligence. These people are not the \u2018B\u2019 players, sad that they couldn\u2019t make the cut to join the King\u2019s hunting team. For my entire career, brilliant, hardworking innovators and entrepreneurs have been disrupting established power structures and upending entire markets. They don\u2019t do this by fielding a second tier team in the old game \u2013 instead they invent a new game and change the world.<\/p>\n

So while the point may be valid for established commodities, it is a bridge too far (and quite the leap of ego) to write off the combined innovative energy of the whole rest of the world.<\/p>\n

I would welcome conversation on this. It feels important.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A very smart and well informed colleague recently shared a thought that disturbed me. I\u2019m writing it here mostly to get it out of my head, and also in the hopes that the eminently quotable Admiral Rickover will once again be proved right: \u201cWeaknesses overlooked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41,34],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-161","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ai-ml","category-equity"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=161"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1166,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/161\/revisions\/1166"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=161"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=161"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dwan.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=161"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}