You are completely missing the point: "deep learning" and AI are mostly synonymous in the current hype cycle, and it began with breakthroughs in deep learning.
How do you mean "AI today"
The AI industry that I work in.
Can you please edit swipes like that out of your comments here? They tend to degrade discussion. If you simply provide correct information, your comments will be stronger and their effect on the thread at large more salutary.
As a third party, may I suggest that this statement amounts to a 'swipe'?
But I've seen the same statement used in a derogatory manner in the sense of "get this done, it's not difficult [if you're not an idiot]" by a bad manager or two. To me it does carry that other sense.
So could we please all not throw about big proclamations about what "AI today" is ("just" or not), without first making sure that we have a thorough understanding of what we are saying?
I thank us all in advance
Edit: Sorry, I see you are the OP in the thread. Note that I did not aim that specifically at you and I included myself in "us". I understand you may have felt frustrated that I challenged your knowledge of AI but I sincerely think that you could have researched the subject a bit better before stating what you think it is.
Edit II: At the very least you could have tried to talk a bit more about why you think that "AI today is just capable of curve fitting". Making such a strong statement without any attempt to back it up with some kind of explanation (I'm not saying you should reference sources and bring "evidence" or anything, just explain it) comes across as a bit, well, ill-informed. With respect.
You just defended a swipe using another swipe.
Your argument is rooted in terminology. Yes, in academia, AI means more than deep learning. Practically speaking, AI and deep learning are synonymous in startup land. And yes, supervised NN techniques are just curve fitting, and are not practical for program synthesis. Which was the original subject of this monotonous thread.
I agree that this thread is dragging on a bit, but it started with a very bold proclamation expressed in strident language criticising peoples' apparent ignorance of the subject- by yourself: "Good grief" and "When will people wake up" rather set the tone of your comment. If you choose to open a conversation like that, with a broadside against "peoples'" ill-informed views I would expect you are prepared to take a bit of criticism regarding the lack of depth of your own views. If not and my criticism has upset you, I apologise, but in that case, maybe you can try to be less provocative in how you express your views in the future, because provocativeness tends to elicit robust reactions.
Edit: In any case I just wanted to say: I get that you're annoyed by our conversation but I'd like to thank you for keeping it civil (if a bit tense) and not resorting to personal attacks. Cheers.
If someone's comments seem ignorant or under-researched, the way to address that is not to put them down, however mildly, but to add correct information about the topic. This has the bonus effect that, in the case where they actually do know a lot about the topic but just have a very different view of it, you won't inadvertently insult them. Also, it's worth remembering that if X is the topic, then "the level of someone's knowledge about X" is actually already a step off topic. Stepping off topic can be great when the step is in a curious direction, but definitely not when it's in a provocative direction.
I'm actually annoyed at myself about this, so I'm definitely trying to remember to be more careful in my comments. Your level-headed moderation is a great help in that, thanks.
I have to say something though- curiosity is only one side of the coin (the coin being the pursuit of knowledge, I guess). The other half is passion. Passion is what causes heated debate, but it's also what causes people to debate in the first place. I think it's a hard balance to strike and we will all need an adult in the room, to help focus our conversations, for a long time to come. Probably not what you want to hear though :)
It's easy to understand how a mild swipe provokes a more aggressive one; indeed it's hard to resist being carried by that current, but that's just what the site guidelines ask us all to do: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html.
AI is most certainly not synonymous with deep learning. It is just people in the industry who do not know anything about AI and who recently jumped on the deep learning bandwagon, who think they are, and people in the tech press who don't have the time to do proper research. I don't see why we need to perpetuate their misconceptions.
Actually, we don't.
Yes, I suppose this is not the best way to say what I wanted to say without getting peoples' back up. I'm leaving it as it is since it's already been read a few times from what I can tell, but here's a less rash version.
What I mean is that, because of the tremendous recent success and public exposure of deep learning, many people have become interested in it who do not have a background in AI, or even in computer science, and who therefore enter the field with big gaps in their understanding of what "AI" means. That is my experience anyway.
Well, it's a shame to work in a field and not understand its history, not least the history of what has already been achieved and what has failed, and how, so that one does not have to repeat history. So it's in everyone's interest to avoid making statements with great certainty when this certainty is not backed up by long-term knowledge.
For the record, I'm a newcome to the field myself. But I have a background in classic AI, specifically logic programming, so I do know the long story.