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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

#31

Post by gas9S9zw3P9c »

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work.

At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result on arXiv so they can put AI research on their resume. This has resulted in so much noise and low quality work that it really hurts the field.

You don't need a degree, but I think you do need to spend some time to get a deep enough understanding of what's going on under the hood, which often includes some math and takes time. This can be made accessible and there are plenty of good resources for that. But all these "become an AI pro by looking at some visualizations and copying this code" is maybe hurting more than it helps because it gives the illusion of understanding when it's actually not there. I wouldn't want people learning (solely) from this touching my production systems, writing blogs, or putting papers on arXiv.

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

#32

Post by amrx101 »

bor100003 wrote: post #24
amrx101 wrote: 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…

Do big companies, offering ML/AI courses hire people with just some of their certificates? I mean, do these courses skip the whiteboarding?

To the best of my knowledge never.

So lets see. Suppose you do a Google Certification for AI|ML. This makes you an apt user of Google's AI platform. Your value lies not with Google but with other companies that want to use Google's platform for AI, ML work.

For specific AI,ML work(like developing the API that you are using), Google will hire PhDs and grad students who specialise in AI|ML. For engineering solutions of those products Google will hire software and distributed systems engineer. You will be hired by someone who wants to use Googles platform.

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

#33

Post by throwgeorge »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #31

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work. At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result…

>putting their result on arXiv so they can put AI research on their resume

are you kidding? it's resulted in a huge amount of researchers publishing results in journals so they can apply to funding agencies that are clueless. I collaborate with a national lab (in the us) and the number of LDRD calls that I'm on where classically trained scientists propose completely clueless machine learning projects is very high. so i think you're being quite naive (or disingenuous) about who the real culprits are in inflating arxiv. also you can't throw up stuff on arxiv without a prof vouching for you.

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

#34

Post by s1t5 »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #31

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work. At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result…

Do you ever feel like all the noise influences the way you think about your own career? I work as a data scientist and sometimes find the hype so off-putting that I think that I should look for a role that's related to solving some optimization problems outside of ML, or a software engineering role in some completely different domain and work as a backend developer or something similar.

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

#35

Post by chosenbreed37 »

s1t5 wrote: post #14
axegon_ wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really familiar territory. I think the hype has poisoned the minds of many and at this state "AI/ML" has turned into a simple buzzword. Much like "blockchain" 2 years ago. And while I'm still as fascinated about ml as I was 5 years ago, like many others, I've decided to stay in the shadows and do my own thing just for the fun of it. Especially since marketing and ego started playing a big role around those communitie…

> Much like "blockchain" 2 years ago. It's different. With the ML stuff there's a bunch of actually useful applications and interesting problems at the core with a lot of fluff and marketing piled on top of it. That's the reason why you're seeing the ML/AI hype last so much longer than blockchain (which was basically a quick cash grab with no substance).

> It's different. With the ML stuff there's a bunch of actually useful applications and interesting problems at the core with a lot of fluff and marketing piled on top of it. That's the reason why you're seeing the ML/AI hype last so much longer than blockchain (which was basically a quick cash grab with no substance).

LOL...I thought supermarkets were using blockchain to track the provenance of their cabbages, coffee beans, beef joints, etc LOL

I think you have a point about ML/AI. To my mind, judging by the hype, there seem to be a lot of solutions looking for a problem. Having said that I feel I should also jump on the bandwagon and get my ML/AI credentials as an insurance against future demand for the skillset ;-)

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

#36

Post by chongli »

gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #31

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work. At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result…

put AI research on their resume. This has resulted in so much noise and low quality work that it really hurts the field.

That’s one way of looking at it. Perhaps another way is ask why all of these employers are hiring people who have done low quality research without understanding who they’re really hiring.

It reminds me of the adverse market effects on gamers when Bitcoin miners were buying up all the GPUs a few years ago. It’s another emergent collective phenomenon that’s distorting the market.

I think there may be quite a few employers out there with non-technical management who have become convinced that they need to hire a machine learning expert, without any particular reason why. They might hear a competitor has hired someone and so they need to as well. Really weird.

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

#37

Post by gas9S9zw3P9c »

s1t5 wrote: post #34
gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #31

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work. At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result…

Do you ever feel like all the noise influences the way you think about your own career? I work as a data scientist and sometimes find the hype so off-putting that I think that I should look for a role that's related to solving some optimization problems outside of ML, or a software engineering role in some completely different domain and work as a backend developer or something similar.

Definitely. I came from a software engineering background into AI 6+ years ago, and I was lucky to be there at the right time. From purely a career perspective, leaving aside that this may be your life's passion, I believe that right now is the worst time to get started in AI. These is so much noise and competition but very few actual jobs or value created. It's just a research PR machine. Just as with Data Science, companies that think they need AI often just need better data collection, pipeline and infrastructure engineering. Good backend/infrastructure/data engineers are so much harder to find these days, and these skills IMO provide much more value than doing some kind of modeling.

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

#38

Post by gas9S9zw3P9c »

chongli wrote: post #36
gas9S9zw3P9c wrote: post #31

As a researcher in the field I am not quite sure how I feel about these kind of resources. I am all for making research accessible to a wider audience and I believe that you don't need a PhD, or any degree, to do meaningful work. At the same time, the low barrier of entry and hype has resulted in a huge amount of people downloading Keras, copying a bunch of code, tuning a few parameters, and then putting their result…

put AI research on their resume. This has resulted in so much noise and low quality work that it really hurts the field. That’s one way of looking at it. Perhaps another way is ask why all of these employers are hiring people who have done low quality research without understanding who they’re really hiring. It reminds me of the adverse market effects on gamers when Bitcoin miners were buying up all the GPUs a few ye…

I think you're absolutely right. In my experience

1. There is much more supply than demand in terms of Machine Learning and Data Science. There aren't actually that many jobs outside of research, it's just that the hype makes it look that way. Now that all these PhDs seem to be starting in ML, I wonder what they will do in 4-5 years when they finish the degree. I don't think a market for them will exist.

2. Many companies don't know what they are doing. They are hiring ML people because they want to put AI into their marketing materials. In reality, they don't need ML, they just need someone collecting data, building a database, and running a query. They just don't realize that's the case. The same happened with "Data Science" and "Big Data" - What most companies needed were software engineers building infrastructure and data collection, not people running sklearn.

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

#39

Post by lumberjack »

Since everyone is talking about hype in ML, I wish there was some hype for good ole' conversional scientific computing. Yes, it's not so sexy, you have to build your own model yourself, and then the hard work is in finding and verifying a suitable numerical method and finally devising a solid implementation. It requires a vast number of different skills, anything from pure math to low level programming and it is definitely not trivial work, but it does not seem like it pays that well.
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