In a popular blog post titled “ The Bitter Lesson,” Richard Sutton argues that AI’s progress has resulted from cheaper computation, not human de

Revisiting Rich Sutton's "The Bitter Lesson"

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2024-05-04 16:00:05

In a popular blog post titled “ The Bitter Lesson,” Richard Sutton argues that AI’s progress has resulted from cheaper computation, not human design decisions based on problem-specific information. Sutton diminishes researchers that build knowledge into solutions based on their understanding of a problem to improve performance. This temptation, Sutton explains, is good for short-term performance gains, and such vanity is satisfying to the researcher. However, such human ingenuity comes at the expense of AI’s divine destiny by inhibiting the development of a solution that doesn’t want our help understanding a problem. AI’s goal is to recreate the problem-solver ex nihilo, not to solve problems directly.

However, most businesses only need to solve some problems, mainly the problems their customers face. There is no such thing as a general-purpose company, so there is little need for a general-purpose solution. This is the bitter business lesson because problem-specific information helps you get your solution out the door faster.