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Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

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Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#31

Just as electricity transformed many industries roughly 100 years ago, AI will also now change nearly every major industry This is an underrated point, and something I don't think most people outside of the high level Machine Learning/AI world take seriously. It's also one of the biggest challenges for the industry going forward because of natural monopolies. I say that because if AI is electricity then data is the c…

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Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#32
I haven't seen any comment or quotes yet from Baidu (please correct me if I'm wring!). Amicable high profile departures like this are almost always coordinated between the person leaving and the company, with joint statements. Not saying it's not amicable, but I do find that, and the fact he's not sharing his next move, a little odd.

I also saw a FB thread that seemed to suggest this may have been a surprise to some of his colleagues. Take that with a grain of salt though - I don't know the people on the thread and they were vague. I just got the sense it was news to them.

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#34

Baidu is now one of the few companies with world-class expertise in every major AI area: speech, NLP, computer vision, machine learning, knowledge graph. Just idly, I find it interesting that practical applications of this technology seem to often funnel down to just this subset. There's a lot of room to apply machine learning to solve actual problems that many people have, but often its unclear that doing so would e…

>often its unclear that doing so would end up with results that are significantly better than traditional approaches

If Deep Learning can approximate any function, does that mean that in some cases it ends up approximating the output of traditional approaches?

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#35
post #32

I haven't seen any comment or quotes yet from Baidu (please correct me if I'm wring!). Amicable high profile departures like this are almost always coordinated between the person leaving and the company, with joint statements. Not saying it's not amicable, but I do find that, and the fact he's not sharing his next move, a little odd. I also saw a FB thread that seemed to suggest this may have been a surprise to some…

High-profile departures are hard to read because leadership teams are usually (and should be) paranoid about the effect on morale. Also, as a general rule, clean breaks with little to no warning are easier to digest for the rest of the company rather than long, drawn out affairs where gossip can be given life through dint of "overhearing" the subject (almost incorrectly or out of context) in the hallway.

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#37

Just as electricity transformed many industries roughly 100 years ago, AI will also now change nearly every major industry This is an underrated point, and something I don't think most people outside of the high level Machine Learning/AI world take seriously. It's also one of the biggest challenges for the industry going forward because of natural monopolies. I say that because if AI is electricity then data is the c…

Interesting, this is the same argument made by social theorist Evengy Morozov: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/04/data-p...

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#38

Baidu is now one of the few companies with world-class expertise in every major AI area: speech, NLP, computer vision, machine learning, knowledge graph. Just idly, I find it interesting that practical applications of this technology seem to often funnel down to just this subset. There's a lot of room to apply machine learning to solve actual problems that many people have, but often its unclear that doing so would e…

it was only after your comment that I'm noticing: talking, listening, understanding, seeing and remembering. I wonder if we're just too focused on doing things that people do.

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#39

Just as electricity transformed many industries roughly 100 years ago, AI will also now change nearly every major industry This is an underrated point, and something I don't think most people outside of the high level Machine Learning/AI world take seriously. It's also one of the biggest challenges for the industry going forward because of natural monopolies. I say that because if AI is electricity then data is the c…

Interesting, this is the same argument made by social theorist Evengy Morozov: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/04/data-p...

so did Kevin Kelly, in "The Inevitable". He stretches the electrical metaphor for about a chapter.

"The AI on the horizon looks more like Amazon Web Services — ... This common utility will serve you as much IQ as you want but no more than you need. You’ll simply plug into the grid and get AI as if it was electricity. It will enliven objects, much as electricity did more than a century past."

It's not just AI. Here's Jeff Bezos talking about the internet as electrification

https://www.ted.com/talks/jeff_bezos_on_the_next_web_innovat...

seems a rather common metaphor for a sweeping wave of technological change.

Re: Opening a new chapter of my work in AI

#40

Is his Machine Learning course still relatively up to date? I was considering devoting some time to it, or a course like it soon.

The fundamental techniques of machine learning will always be there. For that reason, Ng's ML course will always be the prime entry point for people new to ML. As someone who has taken both the Ng course and has roughly watched the videos of the fast ai course and done some work, I would recommend first doing the Ng course. Things will be much more calm if you then approach the fast ai DL course. The fast ai course is amazing and hats off to Jeremy and Rachel for the great work. But without any idea of machine learning, I would say you will need to put at least 20 hours of work each week to work through it, and that is if you are also a really proficient programmer.
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