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clueless1245 t1_jbdwxye wrote

Reply to comment by ImpossibleCat7611 in [D] I'm a dentist and during my remaining lifetime I would like to take part in laying groundwork for future autonomic robots powered by AI that are capable of performing dental procedures. What technologies should I start to learn? by Armauer

Do you actually work in ML research lol? About as important as fundamental research on architectures losses and optimisers is the applied end of things and tons of applied stuff is absolutely something other domain experts can contribute to, non ML non CS expertise is absolutely essential to i.e. the stuff my group does. "State of the art on some famous benchmark" is not the be all and end all of this field and "only a small minority is able to make significant contributions" is an absurdly incorrect statement.

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ImpossibleCat7611 t1_jbdy960 wrote

Only a small minority is able to make significant technical contributions. I may have misinterpreted his angle of groundwork, but as he mentioned resources to try and learn ML I assumed he meant technical. As I said domain knowledge and/or providing data and relying on the technical expertise of others is the most valuable direction to go. I think we are actually in agreement here.

I myself work with engineering groups on some applied projects and a lot of the 'applied ML' outside of CS is absolutely horrendous.

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clueless1245 t1_jbdysis wrote

Important though to note are literally not enough people just taking stuff implemented in scikitlearn or whatever and applying that to their own problems, and in and of itself that can be novel and interesting even if its not a shiny new model.

> As I said domain knowledge and/or providing data and relying on the technical expertise of others is the most valuable direction to go.

Its mainly the way you wrote your comment that left a bad taste in my mouth, this line specifically is probs a fine recommendation for OP.

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ImpossibleCat7611 t1_jbe4hl7 wrote

I agree that the tone of my original comment was overly snarky.

The challenge to learn ML for a middle-aged dentist is immense, and probably not where his best uses lie. I was fearful most on here would just tell him to take the plunge. But I see that others have gotten my point across much more eloquently (and not as snarky ;) ).

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