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Comment by jordancampbell | Hacker News Reader

This is completely untrue - machine learning is largely undergraduate mathematics - in fact a lot of the linear algebra is commonly taught in high school.

Definitely agree it's potentially narrow, but there's absolutely nothing wrong with that.

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One of things that we should do as science progresses is open it up to more generalists as we learn its rules and how to teach it more effectively. Quantum Mechanics used to require expert knowledge to learn and use, but today, it is a standard part of undergraduate physics education, and all advanced knowledge in any field will eventually.

One of the signs of how developed a subfield of a science is is how easily it can be taught to non-experts.

I agree. Many of the statistical concepts can be extended from advanced undergraduate stats too. I can see how the high salaries paid in these jobs would lead to some serious gatekeeping though. My concern is that these courses will likely be taught without any deference to the ethics involved in the work done, and I think that will play an increasingly important role in years to come.

Ha I actually think the complete opposite will be true - Here in New Zealand I got a degree in neuroscience without doing any papers outside of core science, whereas in the US I would probably have to do humanities based courses etc (which I think is a fairly good thing) - and it's not unlikely that these will come to include topics in ethics.

Also ethical review boards for other areas of science are very well established, and it's not unrealistic to imagine that extending towards machine learning as well.

Engineers need not get a postgraduate degree, but they are expected to be held to (and are legally held to) very high ethical standards.

Most undergrad engineering worth its salt will require an ethics course and humanities classes broaching the topic.

The main issue is that a lot of people do not take away the intent, or can fully answer questions correctly about the intent but not actually care. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.

>Most undergrad engineering worth its salt will require an ethics course and humanities classes broaching the topic.

Someone I knew in college made bank writing papers for engineers' in those ethics courses.

Linear algebra, some calculus and probability theory

Being a practitioner for Deep Learning, the bar is actually lower than being a proficient, compiler or database programmer.

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