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TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

codelabs.developers.google.com

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Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#2
Tangentially related (and also using the ubiquitous MNIST dataset), Sebastian Lague started a brilliant, but unfortunately unfinished video series on building neural networks from scratch.

This video was an absolute eye-opener me [1] on what classification is, how it works and why a non-linear activation function is required. I probably learned more in the 5 minutes watching this than doing multiple Coursera courses on the subject.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVQUSndDllU

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#3
The video version [1] is also pretty awesome, though its code itself is a bit outdated now. Explains a lot of very practical issues that you might not find in most academic textbooks, but you encounter every day in practice.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vq2nnJ4g6N0

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#4
Have a simple rant here. All these BIG $ companies every now and then come out with statements and what not, that doing AI ML is very easy and every one including their cats should do AI, ML courses and training(preferably on their platform). Once that is done the job market is yours. Reality is far from this.

- Today AI|ML does not have the capability marketed by these big companies. Incidentally marketing is targeted at governments, big non tech companies and gullible undergraduates.

- Undergrads many a times take these training courses wherein they acquire the skill set to call these APIs and flood the job market wherein a data-entry or data-analyst job is tagged as AI|ML job.

- High paying jobs in AI|ML still require a Masters or PhD or a mathematical background.

In conclusion, the current hype around AI|ML is misguiding gullible undergrads and governments(I dont mind the government being cheated THOUGH).

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#5
post #4

Have a simple rant here. All these BIG $ companies every now and then come out with statements and what not, that doing AI ML is very easy and every one including their cats should do AI, ML courses and training(preferably on their platform). Once that is done the job market is yours. Reality is far from this. - Today AI|ML does not have the capability marketed by these big companies. Incidentally marketing is target…

i am doing quite some deep learning work as part of my consultancy practice. And its all hand made stuff , together with lots of trial and error while trying to replicate papers that might be relevant fkr the task at hand.

so i totally agree with your statement. big corps overhype the shit out of it in order to sell and lots of n00bs fail for it.

regarding your last points. even if its super easy nowadays to deploy YOLO, and everyone and his mother can do it, making actually something that works and provides business value is hardcore. and without scientific skills_> no chance

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#6
post #4

Have a simple rant here. All these BIG $ companies every now and then come out with statements and what not, that doing AI ML is very easy and every one including their cats should do AI, ML courses and training(preferably on their platform). Once that is done the job market is yours. Reality is far from this. - Today AI|ML does not have the capability marketed by these big companies. Incidentally marketing is target…

I’d like to add to that list all the “learn AI” blogs etc. that gloss over the details and show you how to call some libraries to do cool stuff. Everyone and their cat can learn how to invoke some APIs, which is cool, but the reality is that data is hard, and if you want to do good, sound work, you need to have an understanding of the math and fundamental principles behind it.

It might not save you from making stupid mistakes or wasting your time, but at least you will know what mistakes you can - and will - make.

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#7
The whole AI/ML stuff has become so hyped up that its probably time to find another topic of interest in software engineering for me. Its a weird melange nowadays where frameworks and "academic credentials" are fused together by major tech companies and leaves me - who has deployed a dozen of classical ML models into production that are still running after couple of years - wondering what this is all about.

Overall, working with people with different backgrounds, a ML-related PhD is usually not correlated nor anti-correlated to these people having a good understanding of the relationship between models and and their applications.

I wish we could leave the framework and name-dropping behind and talk more about what it takes to evaluate predictions, how to cope with biases, etc.

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#8
I'm doing deep learning without a data science background.

Some of my current results are:

* https://vo.codes

* https://trumped.com

The voices need better data curation and longer training, but some speakers such as David Attenborough are quite good.

I've also built a real time streaming voice conversion system. I want to generalize it better so that it can be an actual product. I think it could be a killer app for Discord. Imagine talking to your friends as Ben Stein or Ninja.

I've been watching TTS and VC evolve over the last few years, and it's incredible pace at which things are coming along. There are now singing neural networks that sound better than Vocaloid. If you follow researchers on Github (seriously, their social features are a killer app!), you'll see model after model get uploaded - complete with citations, results. It's super exciting, and it's the future I hoped research would become.

If you're diving into this, I would recommend using PyTorch, not TensorFlow. PyTorch is much easier to use and has better library/language support. TorchScript / JIT is really fantastic, too. I even mean this if just you're poking around with someone else's model - find a PyTorch alternative if you can. It's much easier to wrap your head around. TensorFlow is just too obtuse for no good reason.

Re: TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

#10
post #8

I'm doing deep learning without a data science background. Some of my current results are: * https://vo.codes * https://trumped.com The voices need better data curation and longer training, but some speakers such as David Attenborough are quite good. I've also built a real time streaming voice conversion system. I want to generalize it better so that it can be an actual product. I think it could be a killer app for D…

This is an amazing side project. Would you share some details about how you've hosted them? Also, if possible about the training details like how long did it take for you train them? Did you do it on your local GPU or some cloud provider or free service like Colab?
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