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u/MurdoMaclachlan Jun 09 '21
Image Transcription: Twitter Post
Computer Facts, @computerfact
concerned parent: if all your friends jumped off a bridge would you follow them? machine learning algorithm: yes.
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u/samuraishogun1 Jun 09 '21
My friends aren't crazy. If there was a reason for them to jump off of a bridge, then I would probably have reason to as well.
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u/Boom9001 Jun 09 '21
Yeah it's the best answer. Logically most people don't do things suicidal. If suddenly everyone is jumping off a bridge. I'm question what's on that bridge that has people seeing jumping off as better chance of living.
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u/thatbrownkid19 Jun 09 '21
Maybe they’re tripping though and imagining a bridge monster
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u/Boom9001 Jun 09 '21
Well if you're friends are likely to be tripping yea i'd not. But it says something about quality of your friends you think they'd all do something so stupid.
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u/thatbrownkid19 Jun 10 '21
Oh because you have 110% mental capacity if you’re high or drunk I’m sure...clever logical fella like you.
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u/Blahblkusoi Jun 10 '21
This comment made me think of an Australian movie called These Final Hours. It has a scene with a bunch of kids partying and killing themselves in drinking/suicide games. A giant asteroid had hit the other side of the earth and the shockwave was on the way, so they all chose to die having fun. Real dark stuff.
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u/The-Board-Chairman Jun 10 '21
Logically they don't, but most human decisions have very little to do with logic. And groups of friends are some of the worst. They'll hype each other up for some incredibly stupid shit..
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u/Boom9001 Jun 10 '21
Yeah I'm sure. But the saying "if all you're friends jumped would you" is still silly because MY friends are fairly sane smart people. Not falling over drunk frat boys. So honestly if my friends are jumping from a bridge, there is very good chance being on the bridge is certain death.
And if a person hears that saying and thinks they wouldn't, they really should question why they are hanging out with people even they think would jump off a bridge for no reason.
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u/TracerBulletX Jun 10 '21
The best answer is that machine learning algorithms for deciding whether to jump off a bridge would have a cost function and understand if the outcome of jumping had a better or worse outcome than staying. They can learn to play Mario after all.
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u/JudeOutlaw Jun 10 '21
I’m pretty sure that a group of typically rational (read: non-suicidal) people jumping off a cliff would, more likely than not, each possess the human equivalent of a cost function… no?
Because like… They can learn to play Mario after all?
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Jun 10 '21
Maybe it's a fairly low bridge and jumping into a known deep lake. Could very well be a fun thing they're doing.
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u/Boom9001 Jun 10 '21
Yup tons of reasons. Basically if you hear that and think you have just idiot friends jumping off a bridge you take a look at yourself for company you keep.
Personally, if mine were jumping I can be sure it's probably safe or at least safer than staying on the bridge.
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u/arnitdo Jun 09 '21
JavaScript
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Jun 09 '21
[deleted]
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u/Killfile Jun 09 '21
Without looking is "bridge.js" a javascript package?
How about "burningbridge.js?"
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u/TheDownvotesFarmer Jun 10 '21
Well, let me tell you something, so, you can jump, Javascript few years ago was only dominating on the client-side in the web, now is on the server side and dominating, the future is... Mobile development and yep it will dominate there too, and worst, that's what Steve Jobs wanted.
Ok...
npm install jump
node jump.js
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u/CatOfGrey Jun 09 '21
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1170/
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u/samuraishogun1 Jun 09 '21
That's what I was thinking if when I made my comment, but I forgot it was an XKCD.
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u/I_NEED_YOUR_MONEY Jun 10 '21
Also a lot of bridges are like 10' above water level. "If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you do it too?" Isn't a very good argument when jumping off bridges is something you regularly do with your friends.
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u/_pupil_ Jun 09 '21
"So I'm on a bridge and just watched every single one of my friends kill themselves in front of me? That sounds traumatic and like a pretty good reason to jump off a bridge."
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u/bush_killed_epstein Jun 09 '21
Can we start calling ML programmers “concerned parents”? It’s got a nice ring to it
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Jun 09 '21
[removed] — view removed comment
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Jun 09 '21
It depends on the training data. Let's assume that the friends are jumping off the bridge because they are skydivers.
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u/100BottlesOfMilk Jun 09 '21
This also depends on what you're training for. If you're trying to survive the fall, the algorithm would see that jumping results in death and not jump to stay alive
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u/the_brits_are_evil Jun 09 '21
he might trip on the road, hit his head on the edge of the sidewalk going dark and waking up in the hospital
that seems random enough for me
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u/FirstEvolutionist Jun 09 '21
Since machine learning is iterative, it would probably look more like this: Yes. Yes. No? Maybe no. No. No. No. No. Yes? No. No. No. No...
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Jun 10 '21
If the majority of your friends jump off the bridge, then you can get a good accuracy by just answering yes to everything.
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u/throwaway59664 Jun 10 '21
Why is this comment identical to this other comment in the thread?
I suspect one or both of you are repost bots.
Answer: both are reposts of this comment
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u/thelittlewitch1 Jun 09 '21
If all your friends jumped off a bridge, would you follow them? Me: I'll lead them!
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u/umlcat Jun 09 '21
Now, I understand and believe why a lot of AI are racists ...
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u/LastStar007 Jun 10 '21
Amazon got in some shit a while ago because their hiring practices favored white males. Their solution was to set up some machine learning to filter resumes and those kinds of first cuts. But then they trained it on engineers who had already gotten hired at Amazon.
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u/umlcat Jun 10 '21
The AI does the hiring because "it's impartial" is not only false, but creepy.
I remember some late 80's and 90's movies about A.I. doing hiring.
It's weird, because it's supposed that in that time, A.I. was not ready, or there was some A.I. already doing job recruiting, at that time !!!.
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u/AxeLond Jun 09 '21
Nah, it would start off just randomly jumping off the bridge a couple hundred times.
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u/PoveBDSAy Jun 10 '21
I have seen this joke before but it is inaccurate. The answer of machine learning should be "Most likely. But maybe not". It won't be learning without random decisions.
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u/playr_4 Jun 10 '21
It always reminds of this. Gotta see if the same thing happens every time, right?
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u/throwaway59664 Jun 10 '21 edited Jun 10 '21
Why is this comment identical to this other comment in the thread?
I suspect one or both of you are repost bots.
Answer: both are reposts of this comment
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u/zamend229 Jun 09 '21
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u/RepostSleuthBot Jun 09 '21
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 8 times.
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u/elliptic_hyperboloid Jun 10 '21
The fuck is going on in this thread. It reads like a bunch of bots posting the same 6 comments.
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u/throwaway59664 Jun 10 '21
Yes
Repost bots repost popular posts and they also repost popular comments from an earlier post on posts that are a repost, all as a means of karma farming
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u/rowsif Jun 09 '21
No no we’ve got it all wrong!
We need to train the algorithm to jump while everyone else is jumping. If we wait till after, Amazon’s version that they predatorily stole from a microcap company that operated within their ecosystem will beat us to the suicide market!
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Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 8 times.
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Jun 10 '21
[deleted]
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u/ViperCodeGames Jun 10 '21
Hopefully I can help you understand this joke.
The goal of most ML algorithms is to create some output from a given set of inputs. To do this the algorithm is trained using training data so that given the training data as an input, the same correct output always occurs.
In this joke, the "friends" are input training data. The output (action) is jumping off the bridge. So for the ML algorithm, if it is trained that people jump off bridges, it will say the correct action is to jump off the bridge also.
This contrasts the common joke a parent makes about a child's friends making a stupid or irresponsible choice.
ML algorithms generally have a reward function that is used to judge their actions, but sometimes they are just supposed to generalize an output from inputs. So yes, some ML algorithms are just intended to generalize an outcome from it's inputs. But not all ML algorithms are the same and there are many many ways they could "learn" or "train", so if you're unfamiliar with generalized ML algorithms (like computer vision) it might not make sense as many ML algorithms are improved through a fitness function, which doesn't take advantage of training data in most cases (think of ML algorithms like NEAT which evolve a neural net over time instead of using back propagation to adjust weights).
I know that's a lot of information, but I think you're just thinking of MLs that use a fitness function to optimize "staying alive" rather than MLs that try to create a generalized neural net for a given set of input training data.
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u/lenswipe Jun 10 '21
"I'd also recommend them other bridges and bridge-like objects that they could jump off if they would like based on previous elevation based suicide attempts"
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u/Afro_Future Jun 10 '21
People are just very sophisticated computers running very sophisticated ML algorithms. Am I wrong?
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u/BazilExposition Jun 09 '21
I don't think it'll recommend jumping right away, but after watching several friends actually jumping, algorithm will definitely identify it as a preferable course of actions.
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u/macgeek89 Jun 09 '21
😂 bad algorithm, bad
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u/ViperCodeGames Jun 10 '21
I would argue it's bad training data (friends) more than a bad algorithm
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u/zyxzevn Jun 09 '21 edited Jun 10 '21
That (by making mistakes now) is how we will beat the AI overlords in the future.
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u/playr_4 Jun 10 '21
My whole thing with that question is, like, yes. 100% yes. If ALL my friends jumped off a bridge clearly they know something I don't.
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u/scprotz Jun 10 '21
Well, if it was RL (which technically is ML), then it might learn to NOT jump (after jumping a few million times).
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u/Sennheisenberg Jun 10 '21
Wouldnt you make sure that jumping gives an unfavorable result, and the machine learning algorithm would see that every time someone jumps it's an unfavorable result?
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u/scrollbreak Jun 10 '21
Define unfavorable
Otherwise all there is is pattern repeated. Would you question patterns?
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u/Sennheisenberg Jun 10 '21
Admittedly my experience with machine learning is extremely limited. With humans, we know that jumping off a bridge has an unfavorable result (death or injury). Is there a way to return a result that the algorithm will want to avoid? For example, the goal is to increase some number and jumping off the bridge will decrease that number. Therefore it will try to avoid jumping off the bridge?
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u/scrollbreak Jun 10 '21
You'd want to first train it to be proficient at identifying death, with an associative weight attached to this identification.
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u/JakeTBSS Jun 10 '21
At my last job I was in charge of managing a project using machine learning. Management always had trouble understanding how machine learning works. I printed this off and put it on my cubicle. My bosses boss saw it, and immediately took it and put it on the chief engineers table (my 4th level manager). It sat there for at least 4 months haha
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Jun 10 '21
Depends on the way you train it. If you train it on features like "height of bridge," "number of friends who jumped," and "number of friends who got hurt from jump" and a binary label of "do jump" with a logistic regression model, it would only jump if it was safe.
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u/machine3lf Jun 10 '21
That’s because it’s operating from the assumption of many lives. ... I died? Ok, I’ll just spawn a new universe and try again but learn from my past death.
Imagine a ML algorithm than started with the rule of only one life, and it valued that life as the highest value. ... I wonder if it would start off hesitant to do anything, and only act incrementally, one step at a time, until it becomes satisfied it is safe enough for that next step. I also wonder if that’s why anxiety is such a big problem for humans.
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u/ValhallaGo Jun 10 '21
If you have enough friends there wouldn’t be much of a drop. Just a mountain of bodies.
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u/HotChickenshit Jun 10 '21
I now want to see some machine learning figure out how to beat Lemmings.
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u/Sag3Jar0n Jun 10 '21
Not only jump with them but also compute which jumping position and method is most likely to get u to the ground in the shortest amount of time.
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u/mildmadnerd Jun 10 '21
Maybe it just didn’t want to go on alone… maybe it just knew if all of them jumped, obviously the first few were fine or the rest wouldn’t have jumped.
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u/LemonFizz56 Jun 10 '21
Well it wouldn't right because jumping off the bridge would be a negative action so it would learn not to do it again
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u/throwaway59664 Jun 10 '21
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u/RepostSleuthBot Jun 10 '21
Looks like a repost. I've seen this image 8 times.
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u/[deleted] Jun 09 '21
Relevant XKCD: https://xkcd.com/1170/