RL pioneer Szepesvári challenges Hashimoto's 'Deep Learning Alchemy' course: are we teaching half-truths?
CsabaSzepesvari · x · 2026-10-14
RL pioneer Csaba Szepesvári publicly questioned Tatsu Hashimoto's new course Deep Learning Alchemy, asking whether academia is 'embracing alchemy' and abandoning generalizable truths. Hashimoto's course argues deep learning is usually taught as sanitized facts and math while frontier AI work is messy and empirical: students build intuition by running experiments on small LMs, then test it via prediction quizzes. The exchange highlights a real divide in AI education between teaching generalizable theory and hands-on empirical practice.
Related event: Stanford's Deep Learning Alchemy course sparks debate(4 posts)→
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