I don't know how much substance there is to discuss here. It pretty much hinges on how you think AI will develop over the coming decades. I am skeptical that software development will be automated away anytime soon, especially since the actual writing of code is just one part of the job. I recall an Economist article several years back arguing that jobs are less automatable the more varied they are. For this reason custodians should be among the last to go, the logic being that a given custodian does so many different maintenance tasks that it would be impractical for a bot to replace them.
Software development seems similar. You're constantly pivoting between different and shifting problems. Most of the impressive AI demonstrations like image recognition or playing Go are really about getting good at a single well-defined task. We seem to be very far away from the kind of adaptibility required to automate away developers (though perhaps the CS degree will devalue as more people pursue it).
It's also unclear to me how exactly philosophy is better preparation. My own experience with academic philosophy is limited, but from what I can tell its main selling point is that it teaches you to examine things in a critical way that's very aware of the argument in question, the assumptions made, and the structure the argument sits in. My experience in math (which I pursued much more) was similar, and I imagine that most good CS programs teach similar skills?
"Study philosophy" here seems like a catchy (and perhaps poor) proxy for "make sure you can reason about stuff outside a narrow programming bubble". But that's always been good advice.
That's definitely a big (and important) part of it. There's an unfortunate dearth of critical thinking and examination of ideas these days. I have theories as to why that is, but it's out of scope for this discussion so I will abstain.
Another big part of philosophy as well is to familiarize the student with the big ideas with the hope that they can be further refined, to drive both the individual thinker forward, and hopefully humanity as a whole as well.
For example, I think a hugely valuable part of philosophy training is the study of ethics. So many people (software engineers and companies included) don't really stop to think about the ethics surrounding what they are doing. This is a mistake, IMHO. I highly recommend reading about and understanding Immanuel Kant's work in this area, especially his categorical imperative and hypothetical imperative. Comparing/contrasting that with Jon Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism, and conducting various thought experiments makes for a good time (you can tell I'm quite the partier :-D ).
As someone who sees the same things but has no theories, I for one would like to hear a few of yours.
One of my cow-orkers took a bunch of philosophy in college (I think he was at Stanford, in the mid 1970s). He said his course on logic spent a lot of time on DeMorgan's theorem. I don't know about other s/w engineers, but this is something that I use practically every day, usually without even thinking about it -- I don't even remember being taught it, I just sort of figured it out one day early in my career, while I was cleaning up some badly written conditionals.
Cuban's point about knowing philosophy (... which branch? who knows?) is still useful. But it's equally useful to have a wide background in other things than software, when you're writing software. I had a manager once who had a law degree and a Jesuit education, and he was formidable when it came to dealing with department politics and HR bullshit. Just about any value of X in the phrase, "I can write software and do X..." will do you well.
DeMorgans law was definitely a part of that.
It's also randomly useful in every day life to remember, "a implies b doesn't imply b implies a" and stuff like that.
Lol people should hear some of the debates me and my engineering friends have sometimes. It's interjected with all of this stuff.
This really depends on the kind of philosophy you study, which philosophers you're interested in, and how you engage with and react to what you learn.
Asking what you get from studying philosophy is a little like asking what you get from reading books. It really depends on which books you read, how you read them, who you are, what stage of your life you're in, etc. The same books might speak differently to different people, and even to the same person at another stage in their life.
The English-speaking world (and increasingly the rest of the world) is dominated by analytic philosophy, which is one lens, or perhaps a family of lenses, to view philosophy through. But there's also continental philosophy, ancient philosophy, Eastern philosophy/religion, Pragamatism, etc. Each of them brings something different to the table, and has the potential to transform the way you understand the world.
Sure, philosophy can help with critical thinking skills, but to limit it to that is to ignore the content of what one actually learns and engages with. At its best, it can't be reduced to just a bundle of skills, set of knowledge, or "selling point".
People don't seem to realize that while individual tasks are being automated away, we're not even remotely close to the ceiling on what we want programmed.
The farther it goes, the more we'll want to do with it.
"Oh did you get a chance to build that 3d engine this morning? I'm actually going to need it to simulate most of the physical objects San Diego today. For a thing. A report or whatever."
"No, there were a couple of issues. Might have to wait til tomorrow morning."
There's still the edge cases of course. Clogged toilets or adhesive gunk on the windows for example. But where a janitorial crew was required before, now just one janitor handles those while all the routine cleaning is automated by specialized tools.
You just can't compare him to Gates who got where he is today through a combination of luck at birth and supremely hard work (and some questionable business tactics).
He's overexposed too. There's something about people like Gates who don't make a lot of public pronouncements. When they speak, you tend to think it's because they have something of value to say (and they generally do).
Probably doesn't hurt that they also let their work do most of the talking for them (e.g. Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation).
I take the advice of anyone with a huge grain of salt.
I can't really take what he is saying though at any serious level though and I don't believe what he is saying at all. I think that this story is to grab headlines.
What do you mean? What did philosophy teach you about lie detection?
I won't rule out that we may build an AGI by just throwing enough computing power at it and simply simulating brains with enough fidelity but without actually understanding how it works, at least not at first, but I really don't see much - if any - progress towards building an AGI because we know what we have to do. Maybe the secret of general intelligence is just curve fitting and searching at massive scale and we fail to find the secret behind it because there is none, but we really don't know.
That of course doesn't mean that the recent developments are not interesting or don't have useful applications, they are just not as groundbreaking as often portrayed and we probably still have a rather long way to go.
With regards to big picture thinking and general problem solving ability, I don't think you are in a particularly bad spot as a software developer or hacker. Especially not if you are doing project work or frequently change jobs and regularly have to get familiar with new business domains. Also if your focus is more at the design and architecture end of the spectrum as compared to coming up with beautiful looking CSS.
But I would certainly agree that philosophers have some ways of thinking that are at least to some degree unlike what you find in software developers, but I can't really pin it down. I only know it exists because I am frequently somewhat surprised by the thoughts and ideas that come up in philosophy and they seem not like things I would think of. Maybe it is just the level to which philosophers dissect things and which goes beyond what is required in software development but I really can't tell for sure.
So, when it finally happens, it'll move fast.
And I love AI! What programmer doesn’t?
But I completely agree and I think it’s really difficult for people to understand why this it true!
HDNet
So many media appearances that he's a celebrity and his appearance at a location becomes valuable/monetizable. (Dancing With The Stars, Entourage, etc.)
Shark Tank (9 seasons of broadcast /syndicated tv - think about money from the reruns)
Dallas Mavericks (NBA sports team) owner who has appreciated the value of the franchise not to mention won championships
And last but not least he is accessible to entrepreneurs and responsive via email.
I am sympathetic with worries about how automation will affect the job market, and I love philosophy -- but I saw no explanation in this article for why Mark Cuban believes philosophy in particular will be more valuable.
Pay, of course, is determined by supply and demand. Developers currently do well because there are more jobs than people, but that can quickly change (and is changing, albeit slowly). The most common job in America only makes up about 3-4% of the entire workforce. Even if software jobs overtake that and grow to be the most common job in existence, but 10% of the population are willing and capable of being developers (not unbelievable given the current push by the education system to turn everyone into developers), it'll trend towards being a minimum wage job.
And that's assuming that the software labour industry grows substantially from its present size. Cuban is expecting it to shrink as AI takes on more and more development tasks which, if true, will mean we will need even fewer software professionals than we need today.
Is it just me or the character Russ Hanneman from silicon valley is based on Mark Cuban.
I don't think my computer science degree taught me 'specific skills' but instead taught me how to learn. How to pick up new concepts in a short period of time. I think does not fully understand what a computer science degree is or how artificial intelligence works.
I also personally believe that we currently have most if not all of the ingredients necessary for AGI. My prediction is that in 2018 or 2019 we will see public demonstrations of AGI. These initial demos will be underwhelming and not have the capacity of humans or even animals -- but nonetheless will be truly general intelligences with significant human- and animal-like abilities. It will take another few years before the technology is widely recognized to be human-equivalent or better, but the initial systems will be trained in numerous fields quickly. There will be very powerful general systems available by 2021.
Some of the pieces necessary for general intelligence as I see them are truly general purpose inputs and outputs (like a body or virtual body), highly efficient processing of high bandwidth input and output, fast online (immediate) learning, hierarchical learning and computation, the ability to learn and recombine flexible sequences and time-based data. Advanced neural net-based systems, especially ones that are inspired by animal cognition systems, are providing all of these features. Its mainly a matter of integrating existing leading edge neural-net research with a good understanding of AGI.
First, he is reversing cause and effect in that AI is a philosophic problem (more specifically an epistemological problem). The philosophy departments have been doubting the efficacy of reason for over a century now, a process that started with Descartes, advanced by Hume and cashed-in by Kant to save faith from reason (i.e. subjectivism). If modern philosophy had been actually working to validate reason and explain how it works we would already have AI. AI is on hold until someone explains how reason works, and more specifically concepts, in enough detail so that we can program a machine to do it.[1]
Second, if you signed up for philosophy courses or a PhD today, perhaps you would learn how to be a more critical thinker but the danger is you would be infected with navel-gazing skepticism and impotence of reason and thus wreck your ability to think, big or small picture. If you are really talented you can get tenure writing essays destroying the work of your colleagues without generating a shred of original work.[2]
[1] Someone from the early work on computers said (I paraphrase); "Show me what the mind is doing and I can make a machine that can think". I want to say von Neumann but I've never found a source for that statement. If anyone knows who said it and where I would be very grateful for a reference.
[2] LBJ: “Any jackass can kick down a barn but it takes a good carpenter to build one."
I wouldn't expect a philosophy major to leapfrog into a similar compensation package as a competent engineer. At best they're going to be like PMs with domain knowledge, and working experience building software will be required for folks on product teams. Just another case of individual with cross-discipline expertise being more valuable than ones with narrower focus, which is nothing new in the workforce.
Let me explain: Philosophers love questions and problems, but the difference with scientists is that the latter like to find answers to those questions and solutions to those problems. It seems in practice, that philosophers like the questions more than the answers, and like them more to be "unsolved".
I think the arts will possibly, because if AI is doing all the work, building the industries, and technologies we want then I feel science and entertainment will be two things ai can't do.. Science because it takes human curiosity to even know what we want to know or search, and the whole point of knowing is curiosity -- I think science will exist for awhile, albeit augmented fiercely by ai.
Entertainment because if there are no jobs as accountants, lawyers, or doctors, or any other jobs if--we end up in post-scarcity one thing we will need is something to do in all our free time, that something will be binging on netflix and social media 24/7.
I'm not sure if big picture thinking skills come from studying one specific field like philosophy by itself. I'd expect interdisciplinary thinking and life experiences to be more important.
Examples: meet many different kinds of people from around the world who challenge your preconceived ideas, and listen with an open mind. Work many different kinds of jobs (or volunteer). Approach learning from an interdisciplinary perspective and study multiple fields.
Studying philosophy isn't a bad idea, but I don't think that one field by itself is the solution.
Yeah, not much good content here, but it is probably useful to know what people like him are thinking (the new American oligarchs?). If, in fact, he is saying what he actually thinks. The only thing we can be sure of, is that he and his people are scared of AI.
"There have been some theories on this phenomenon, with the most prevalent being the tendency for Wikipedia pages to move up a "classification chain." According to this theory, the Wikipedia Manual of Style guidelines on how to write the lead section of an article recommend that the article should start by defining the topic of the article, so that the first link of each page will naturally take the reader into a broader subject, eventually ending in wide-reaching pages such as Mathematics, Science, Language, and of course, Philosophy, nicknamed the "mother of all sciences"."
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Getting_to_Philosoph...
I doubt they're going to be teaching the exact same way in 30 years.
Dang I couldn’t think of a less qualified guy to make that call!
And I love philosophy!
> That's because Cuban expects artificial intelligence technology to vastly change the job market, and he anticipates that eventually technology will become so smart it can program itself.
> "What is happening now with artificial intelligence is we'll start automating automation," Cuban tells AOL. "Artificial intelligence won't need you or I to do it, it will be able to figure out itself how to automate [tasks] over the next 10 to 15 years.
This is coming from a guy who doesn't know a lick of programming, let alone anything about AI. In fact, he mainly dabbles in sports and Shark Tank. Yet another "you luddites are all going to be replaced, so you better piss your pants" article, and all it's based on is this guy's gut feeling. Silicon Valley needs to chill the fuck out with overhyping AI, because it's going to backfire on them substantially when people start realizing they can't back up their promises.
