Any researcher who’s focused on applying machine learning to real-world problems has likely received a response like this one: “The authors present a solution for an original and highly motivating problem, but it is an application and the significance seems limited for the machine-learning community.”
The goal of artificial intelligence is to push forward the frontier of machine intelligence. In the field of machine learning, a novel development usually means a new algorithm or procedure, or—in the case of deep learning—a new network architecture. As others have pointed out, this hyperfocus on novel methods leads to a scourge of papers that report marginal or incremental improvements on benchmark data sets and exhibit flawed scholarship (pdf) as researchers race to top the leaderboard.
Meanwhile, many papers that describe new applications present both novel concepts and high-impact results. But even a hint of the word “application” seems to spoil the paper for reviewers. As a result, such research is marginalized at major conferences. Their authors’ only real hope is to have their papers accepted in workshops, which rarely get the same attention from the community.
This is a problem because machine learning holds great promise for advancing health, agriculture, scientific discovery, and more. The first image of a black hole was produced using machine learning. The most accurate predictions of protein structures, an important step for drug discovery, are made using machine learning. If others in the field had prioritized real-world applications, what other groundbreaking discoveries would we have made by now?
This is not a new revelation. To quote a classic paper titled “Machine Learning that Matters” , by NASA computer scientist Kiri Wagstaff: “Much of current machine learning research has lost its connection to problems of import to the larger world of science and society.” The same year that Wagstaff published her paper, a convolutional neural network called AlexNet won a high-profile competition for image recognition centered on the popular ImageNet data set, leading to an explosion of interest in deep learning. Unfortunately, the disconnect she described appears to have grown even worse since then.
The original article can be found here.
In support of positive AI development for the society, the Michael Dukakis Institute for Leadership and Innovation (MDI) and Boston Global Forum (BGF) established the Artificial Intelligence World Society (AIWS.net) in 2018. In this effort, MDI and BGF invite participation and collaboration with think tanks, universities, non-profits, firms, and other entities that share its commitment to the constructive and development of full-scale AI for world society.
