Putting the user first is the approach that Fast.ai took when building their Deep Learning library. I think of Jeremy Howard as the Don Norman of Machine Learning. Instead of just focusing on the model building part, Fast.ai builds tools around all of the below. By tools I don't mean a black box service, I mean software design patterns specific to Machine Learning.

This blog post generated a lot of discussion on Hacker News -- many people have reached out to me giving more examples of the stagnation and more examples of projects avoiding it. Maybe I'll add to this article or maybe I'll write a new one, let's see what happens. In the meantime if you can't wait for me to stop staring at the ceiling and write something new, I'm pretty sure you'll enjoy my e-book robotoverlordmanual.com Academics think of themselves as trailblazers, explorers -- seekers of the truth. Any fundamental discovery involves a significant degree of risk. If an idea is guaranteed to work then it moves from the realm of research to engineering.