Data Science at the Singularity

Abstract

A purported `AI Singularity' has been in the public eye recently. Mass media and US national political attention focused on `AI Doom' narratives hawked by social media influencers. The European Commission is announcing initiatives to forestall `AI Extinction'. In my opinion, `AI Singularity' is the wrong narrative for what's happening now; recent happenings signal something else entirely. Something fundamental to computation-based research really changed in the last ten years. In certain fields, progress is dramatically more rapid than previously, as the fields undergo a transition to frictionless reproducibility (FR). This transition markedly changes the rate of spread of ideas and practices, affects mindsets, and erases memories of much that came before. The emergence of frictionless reproducibility follows from the maturation of 3 data science principles in the last decade. Those principles involve data sharing, code sharing, and competitive challenges, however implemented in the particularly strong form of frictionless open services. Empirical Machine Learning (EML) is todays leading adherent field, and its consequent rapid changes are responsible for the AI progress we see. Still, other fields can and do benefit when they adhere to the same principles. Many rapid changes from this maturation are misidentified. The advent of FR in EML generates a steady flow of innovations; this flow stimulates outsider intuitions that there's an emergent superpower somewhere in AI. This opens the way for PR to push worrying narratives: not only `AI Extinction', but also the supposed monopoly of big tech on AI research. The helpful narrative observes that the superpower of EML is adherence to frictionless reproducibility practices; these practices are responsible for the striking progress in AI that we see everywhere.