Pedro Domingos

Professor Emeritus, University of Washington · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

academicscientistauthorexecutive@pmddomingos ↗homes.cs.washington.edu/~pedrod ↗Wikipedia ↗

Pedro Domingos is an artificial intelligence researcher known for introducing Markov logic networks and authoring The Master Algorithm. He co-founded the International Machine Learning Society and previously served as the Head of Machine Learning at D. E. Shaw & Co.

14statements → 7claims → 2claims resolved → 3.86/5average certainty → 3/5average debate potential →

2 supported 0 partly supported 0 contradicted 5 not checkable as stated how the 7 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 3 assertions · 3 opinions · 4 insights · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 7 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 2 are resolved, and 5 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Pedro argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Assertion Supported

Pedro Domingos: Every major ML algorithm can theoretically learn any function

“On a theoretical level, every one of these major machine learning algorithms has a theorem that says if you give it enough data, it can learn any function.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 11:46 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

How they sound: speaking style how? →

294 words/min while actually speaking · 7.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Pedro Domingos: only 2 usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 7,277 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

What they said14 Episodes1

Everything Pedro Domingos said on the MAD Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Pedro Domingos predicts Backprop alone will not reach general AI

“I actually do not believe that that's the case. I think Backprop will not get us there.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 14:09 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Opinion

Domingos: Mandating total model explainability literally makes deep learning illegal

“And at the end of the day, you know, you can't, like the European Union, mandate that every model has to be explainable, right? Because then, if you read that law literally, it makes deep learning illegal, right?”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 32:31 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Opinion

Pedro Domingos: Very little of current machine learning capability has been deployed

“With the existing machine learning technology, of what we can do with that, how much have we done? Very little so far. So there's enormous amount for, enormous scope to do things there. Not just in finance, but in a lot of other fields, right?”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 4:14 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Domingos: AI is too early to predict 20 years into the future

“I would say we are so much in the beginning that we can't even really picture where we're going to be 20 years from now.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 4:55 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Domingos: The hardest problem in AI is learning representation

“The hardest problem in AI is coming up with a representation. Once you've done that, the rest follows, and when you don't do that, you don't really get very far”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 18:14 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Domingos: AI is an amazing tool for authoritarianism

“AI can be a great tool for democracy. It is also unfortunately an amazing tool for authoritarianism.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 25:40 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Domingos: Dumb AI is vastly more dangerous than smart AI

“The real danger of AI is not that computers will get too smart and take over the world. The real danger is that computers are too stupid, and they've already taken over the world, right? Computers are making decisions about us the whole time, and they're dumb,…”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 26:57 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Domingos: Future human work will shift to setting goals and verifying AI output

“So we humans, right, I can see a future where our full-time occupation is to tell the, you know, algorithms what we want to do, set the objective function, set the boundaries, and then verify the solutions all the time, continuously.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 34:16 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Insight

Domingos: Major deep learning wins come from combining multiple techniques

“A lot of the things that people think of as successes of deep learning are actually successes of combining deep learning with other things.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 15:41 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Opinion

Domingos: Geoffrey Hinton hasn't made capsule networks work yet despite right intuition

“I think capsule networks are a very interesting, you know I like the intuition behind capsule networks. I think they point in the right direction. I think Jeff hasn't quite been able to make them work yet.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 20:50 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Not checkable as stated

Domingos: Machine learning's five major paradigms haven't changed since the 1950s

“There's been enormous progress. The five major paradigms are exactly the same as they were then.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 21:25 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Prediction Not checkable as stated

Domingos: Terminator-style AI scenarios are not happening anytime soon

“Terminator isn't happening anytime soon. First of all, because the technology isn't there, but second of all, because there is this, I mean, like a lot of these, I think, errors that people made come from anthropomorphizing AI.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 23:00 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Supported

Pedro Domingos: Every major ML algorithm can theoretically learn any function

“On a theoretical level, every one of these major machine learning algorithms has a theorem that says if you give it enough data, it can learn any function.”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 11:46 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Assertion Supported

Domingos: State-of-the-art AI models have more connections than many animals

“Having said that, if you look at the number of connections that the state-of-the-art machine learning systems for some of these problems have, they're more than many animals. So we're actually at the point where the, you know, they have hundreds of millions or…”

Pedro Domingos Oct 22, 2019 ▶ 29:01 Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven NYC)

Appearances (1)

Episode	Date	Speaking time
Fireside Chat: Pedro Domingos, Head of Machine Learning, DE Shaw (FirstMark's Data Driven	Oct 22, 2019	30m

Pedro Domingos

The record, in short

Their most notable supported claim

How they sound: speaking style how? →

Appearances (1)

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