The Bitter Lesson in AI

Hey, have you seen the following graph? It's like Moore's Law, but for AI. Whether or not it continues at this exact pace, it's clear AI is advancing by leaps and bounds.

Rich Sutton's essay, "The Bitter Lesson," offers a fascinating perspective based on over 70 years of AI research: general-purpose methods that leverage computation—such as search and learning—consistently outperform approaches relying on human-engineered knowledge. We've seen this proven repeatedly:

• Chess: In 1997, IBM's Deep Blue defeated world champion Garry Kasparov using deep search techniques, surpassing human-crafted strategies.

• Go: AlphaGo achieved unprecedented victories by combining deep learning with Monte Carlo Tree Search, surpassing methods rooted in human heuristics.

• Speech Recognition: Statistical models like Hidden Markov Models (HMMs), followed by deep learning approaches, have surpassed systems built purely on phonetic and linguistic rules.

• Computer Vision: A shift from handcrafted features to deep convolutional neural networks dramatically improved image recognition capabilities.

As AI continues this rapid trajectory, staying informed and adaptable is crucial.

We're not just witnessing technological growth; we're experiencing a transformation across all sectors and daily life.

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