Comments on: Toward the Commoditization of Natural Language Processing http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2008/11/14/toward-the-commoditization-of-natural-language-processing/ Computer Scientist and Open Scholar: Databases, Information Retrieval, Business Intelligence. Wed, 23 May 2012 19:07:50 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.2 By: Peter Turney http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2008/11/14/toward-the-commoditization-of-natural-language-processing/comment-page-1/#comment-50262 Peter Turney Mon, 17 Nov 2008 21:03:23 +0000 http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/?p=1503#comment-50262 Daniel, thanks for your kind words. My algorithm is only a small increment, as Kevembuangga notes. I believe that science <a href="http://apperceptual.wordpress.com/2007/01/15/the-heroic-theory-of-scientific-development/" rel="nofollow">always proceeds by small increments</a>. I give an informal description of the paper <a href="http://apperceptual.wordpress.com/2008/09/07/a-uniform-approach-to-analogies-synonyms-antonyms-and-associations/" rel="nofollow">here</a>. Daniel, thanks for your kind words. My algorithm is only a small increment, as Kevembuangga notes. I believe that science always proceeds by small increments. I give an informal description of the paper here.

]]> By: Daniel Lemire http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2008/11/14/toward-the-commoditization-of-natural-language-processing/comment-page-1/#comment-50258 Daniel Lemire Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:47:31 +0000 http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/?p=1503#comment-50258 Thankfully, there are exceptions, such as Peter Turney... Thankfully, there are exceptions, such as Peter Turney…

]]> By: Kevembuangga http://lemire.me/blog/archives/2008/11/14/toward-the-commoditization-of-natural-language-processing/comment-page-1/#comment-50257 Kevembuangga Sat, 15 Nov 2008 17:39:46 +0000 http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/?p=1503#comment-50257 Alas this is still grunt work driven by the "competition imperative", typical of what I criticised as <a href="http://www.daniel-lemire.com/blog/archives/2008/10/27/the-future-of-innovation-is-in-software/#comment-50246" rel="nofollow">“nifty promising results”</a> for another domain (software) but the basic flaw is the same and has been well stated 25 years ago by Marcel Schoppers: <a href="http://groups.google.com/group/net.ai/msg/2291edb1720238f2" rel="nofollow">"If AI has made little obvious progress it may be because we are too busy trying to produce useful systems before we know how they should work."</a> As you say Daniel: <i>Being sane, most researchers work on problem where it is plausible they can make some progress in a few months by working in small increments each day.</i> But THIS is "the problem", not the way to a solution and it stems directly from the rules of publishing (irrespective of the "goodness" of peer reviewing) and from the need for a career. Early scientists from Newton to may be somewhere in the middle of XIX century didn't have so much pressing economic constraints and were able to speculate more freely on abstract questions, not El Naschie way of course, LOL (though... Newton delved in many kooky topics...). Alas this is still grunt work driven by the “competition imperative”, typical of what I criticised as “nifty promising results” for another domain (software) but the basic flaw is the same and has been well stated 25 years ago by Marcel Schoppers:
“If AI has made little obvious progress it may be because we are too busy
trying to produce useful systems before we know how they should work.”

As you say Daniel: Being sane, most researchers work on problem where it is plausible they can make some progress in a few months by working in small increments each day.
But THIS is “the problem”, not the way to a solution and it stems directly from the rules of publishing (irrespective of the “goodness” of peer reviewing) and from the need for a career.
Early scientists from Newton to may be somewhere in the middle of XIX century didn’t have so much pressing economic constraints and were able to speculate more freely on abstract questions, not El Naschie way of course, LOL (though… Newton delved in many kooky topics…).

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