From Protoscience to Epistemic Monoculture: How Benchmarking Set the Stage for the Deep Learning Revolution

arXiv:2404.06647v1 Announce Type: cross
Abstract: Over the past decade, AI research has focused heavily on building ever-larger deep learning models. This approach has simultaneously unlocked incredible achievements in science and technology, and hindered AI from overcoming long-standing limitations with respect to explainability, ethical harms, and environmental efficiency. Drawing on qualitative interviews and computational analyses, our three-part history of AI research traces the creation of this "epistemic monoculture" back to a radical reconceptualization of scientific progress that occurred in the 1990s. …

abstract ai research arxiv benchmarking building cs.ai cs.cy cs.lg deep learning ethical ever explainability limitations research science science and technology set stage technology type unlocked