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beezlebub33 OP t1_ireprux wrote

Reply to comment by 3jckd in [D] Giving Up on Staying Up to Date and Splitting the Field by beezlebub33

>Why do you even need to understand everything? FOMO?

FOMO is part of it. I'm interested in ML in general, and think that AI is coming (really unsure when) and I want to be part of all of it. I have this fear that someone is going to do something very important and I just won't know about it.

There is also the expectation (at least where work) that when you are a 'Machine Learning Engineer' that you have a pretty good grasp on the field as a whole. You don't want someone to say 'What do you think of Random Forests, how do they work?' and you go 'What's a Random Forest?' (hyperbolic example). I kind of sucks when you are the 'ML Guy' in a pretty big company so people come to you with (random) questions.

Finally, I'm old enough that I think that when ML started, I did know most of it. Having been raised on Duda and Hart and then was around when backprop made it's second renaissance, I remember when Elements of Statistical Learning came out. So, perhaps it's a sadness that the field has blossomed beyond me.

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nullbyte420 t1_irethse wrote

To answer questions from normal people you don't need to know the latest thing. You need to understand the basics really well, because that's what they don't 🙂 Anyone can read the latest paper but not everyone can put it into context and compare it to existing models.

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csreid t1_irg0y7f wrote

I kinda get where OP is coming from, though. With all the pop-sci ML stuff and big press releases for popular consumption hitting really shortly after actual publication, there's always a risk that some manager will be like "hey I just read about stable diffusion on Twitter, can we use it to do this?" and then you're a deer in headlights bc you weren't at the press conference where they introduced it and you have no idea what the manager is even talking about.

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Ulfgardleo t1_irg3wty wrote

"This is a fairly new model and I do not know the details. If you seriously consider this, I can read up on the most recent work and then we have a meeting next week and discuss whether and how it could help us".

The awesome thing about solid basics is that you can do exactly this.

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csreid t1_irjtm3b wrote

But this bit:

>"This is a fairly new model and I do not know the details"

is hard! I understand having anxiety about being The ML Guy and not being able to immediately answer questions.

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Ulfgardleo t1_irm2bsq wrote

yes. I think at this point it is important to realize that in the exact moment you got hired by a company, your role changed.

You were the guy with a PhD straight from university who did top-notch research. Now, you are the guy hired to make this project work.

If your job description does not include "active research" or "follow the most recent advances in ML research" then it is not your job to know what is up - especially if it is an advancement in a subfield of ML your project is not actively interested in.

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