#+TITLE: Untitled rant on machine learning hype
#+AUTHOR: Chris Hodapp
#+DATE: February 24, 2018
#+TAGS: technobabble

The present state in machine learning feels like an arms-race for
techniques that perfomr better, faster, more efficient, or whatever on
a handful of problems, and not much in terms of killer applications
that actually need this.

We've all been hearing for a few years about the demand here but
mostly there seems a dearth of companies that actually have any sort
of sustained vision for actual uses of machine learning.  Plenty exist
that have grand promises, and plenty of large companies keep trying to
acquire all talent to further that arms race, but that's about it.

Certainly this will change as machine learning "gets better" but in
order for a lot of improvement to occur there must be at the same time
some actual compelling ideas and applications to drive it.

In that sense I don't believe that crrent advancements will be that
fruitful on their own.  We don't need optimizations, we need
applications.

Of course this is not the first time a entire industry was imagined
and hyped based on neat technology and little else...

Right now I feel as though the work is going to those who can actually
articulate the "why" in specific terms, not those with some good
knowledge primarily on the "how".
