> Let's put deep learning aside for a second. Can anyone here name a single academic in any other subfield of computer science who had a string of groundbreaking research works where every one of those works is from 1980 or after?
That's because of the nature of the field. CS researchers are kind of like NPCs or bureaucrats. The technical stuff we do is not interesting to the general public, but it enables other people to do more interesting stuff.
You mention deep learning as an exception. I, as a researcher in another CS subfield, cannot name a single person who has done fundamental work in it.
The "tragedy" of CS is that it's too relevant in the short term. If someone makes a breakthrough, other people will probably commercialize it in a decade or two. Afterwards, history books won't remember the person who discovered the thing but the company that commercialized it or the product launched by the company.
> The technical stuff we do is not interesting to the general public, but it enables other people to do more interesting stuff.
People upthread said a lot of scientific research is useless, but my understanding was that the research eventually builds on top of each other in a lot of cases?
Deep in the trenches a lot of research these days is actually just pretty fucking useless. There are many, many results that unfortunately do not replicate in even slightly different situations. It's a very inefficient way to be searching the scientific space so to speak, and it's a more modern phenomenon. We've scaled (or tried to) science in IMO a really bad way. At least in neurobiology I'm very convinced of that.
That's because of the nature of the field. CS researchers are kind of like NPCs or bureaucrats. The technical stuff we do is not interesting to the general public, but it enables other people to do more interesting stuff.
You mention deep learning as an exception. I, as a researcher in another CS subfield, cannot name a single person who has done fundamental work in it.
The "tragedy" of CS is that it's too relevant in the short term. If someone makes a breakthrough, other people will probably commercialize it in a decade or two. Afterwards, history books won't remember the person who discovered the thing but the company that commercialized it or the product launched by the company.