I kind of agree with his worldview but the tone of his articles is so polemical that it's not an effective critique of the field. It just puts peoples' backs up.
Someone definitely needs to stick machine learning's nose into its own dirt, for its own good first of all, but it must be done in a very serious, stick-up-its-arse manner, focusing only on the practical aspects and leaving any emotion aside, and all in a calm and erudite voice, otherwise it won't have any effect.
Of course, now that I say this, there has been one such critique and it was ignored roundly, probably because Noam Chomsky Doesn't Tweet.
Sorry, I can't find the edited interview (and the transcript doesn't quite get the "calm and erudite" voice across, what with all the uhs it transcribes). And I'm half-wrong about the reaction because there was a reaction, from a certain Peter Norvig, oh yes sirree there was:
Someone definitely needs to stick machine learning's nose into its own dirt, for its own good first of all, but it must be done in a very serious, stick-up-its-arse manner, focusing only on the practical aspects and leaving any emotion aside, and all in a calm and erudite voice, otherwise it won't have any effect.
Of course, now that I say this, there has been one such critique and it was ignored roundly, probably because Noam Chomsky Doesn't Tweet.
This is what I mean:
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/myl/PinkerChomskyMIT.html
Sorry, I can't find the edited interview (and the transcript doesn't quite get the "calm and erudite" voice across, what with all the uhs it transcribes). And I'm half-wrong about the reaction because there was a reaction, from a certain Peter Norvig, oh yes sirree there was:
http://norvig.com/chomsky.html
But I'm still with Chomsky on this.