What Christopher Olah thinks about ideas vs execution

@chris-olah · 11 positions · On ppll ↗

Interpretability researcher at Anthropic, which he co-founded; before that at OpenAI and Google Brain.

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2 dated positions, 2015, in their own words. Our reading of what Christopher Olah has said — not written or endorsed by them.

2 positions so far — this page is not yet offered to search engines.

1. 31 Aug 2015

   Our readingAn idea can look obvious in hindsight only because the insight that makes it obvious was itself the hard discovery.

   Their wordsIt also wasn't obvious that derivatives were the right way to train them. Those are only obvious once you realize you can quickly calculate derivatives. There was a circular dependency.

   ↗Calculus on Computational Graphs: Backpropagationcolah.github.io 1st of 2 in this piece

3. 31 Aug 2015

   Our readingOnce a problem is correctly framed, the hardest part of solving it is already done.

   Their wordsThat's the benefit of hindsight. Once you've framed the question, the hardest work is already done.

   ↗Calculus on Computational Graphs: Backpropagationcolah.github.io 2nd of 2 in this piece