[lasagnaphil]

Nah, he’s more of a hobbyist in AI. I don’t necessarily think you need to be explicitly in academia to produce good academic work (independent researchers do exist), but he hasn’t really produce anything (in terms of actual theoretical/experimental results) that could be regarded as a substantial contribution to the field. He’s made some anime datasets though, maybe it could be useful to some.

[salt-licker]

I often wonder if being too close to the experimental results and current techniques blinds some people from seeing the bigger picture. Gwern certainly seems good at analyzing large-scale trends in AI research, perhaps broad high-level knowledge of the field is advantageous for this vs deep understanding of specific neural network details.

[random314]

I trust Hinton and LeCun who have actually created the trends and bigger picture and invented the now "current" techniques over commentators who show up years later and offer shallow non peer reviewed analysis and predictions.

Reminds me of this talk by the failed tech startup's non technical CEO who apparently was able to see the bigger picture that scientist aspergers needs weren't able to see.

https://youtu.be/ukgnU2aXM2c