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TensorFlow, Keras and deep learning, without a PhD

codelabs.developers.google.com

51–60 of 156 posts

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

#51

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…

But then again, a lot of current ML jobs are basically just that - finding some optimal architecture, tune hyperparameters, and bam! You're now a modern "AI" powered company. Heck, I've encountered plenty of ML jobs that didn't require anything more than familiarity with some known frameworks or libraries, and being able to apply known methods to real-world data / problems. So I can absolutely understand why people a…

This is really a myth. Most ML jobs require very detailed understanding of statistics because the devil is in the details.

You need to understand things like multicollinearity, coding biases, missing data techniques, convergence of Markov chains, learning curves, mechanics of various higher order gradient optimization methods, how to really carefully evaluate goodness of fit in a huge range of categories of models (neural nets are the vast minority of all models used in production settings) and a ton more beyond this.

If you read “tensorflow for hackers” and believe you can write production neural nets, it’s a disaster.

Garbage in equals garbage out.

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

#52

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…

[deleted]

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

#53
The title is obviously clickbait-y, but it’s fine: they’re trying to sell a product (Google Colab).

IMO if you’re interested in AI research or ML engineering, you already know that — in order to avoid getting people killed - you have to understand how it works under-the-hood. You’re doing yourself, your employer and your fellow humans a favour.

Just keep up the good work, and ignore the bullshit. If an AI winter comes, you’ll be well prepared to migrate to another engineering role.

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

#54
post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Hey, but ML is the new electricity and you are certified. /s

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

#55
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

> they want to put AI into their marketing materials.

Somebody should start a thread that captures the silly examples of this. My personal favorite was a workout template “powered by AI”. Mind you, the only information the customer provided was the basics like age, sex, weight, and goal. This signaled peak AI hype for me.

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

#56
I wonder if Google is using this resource to train their own staff without PhD and after that allow them to work as ML engineers? That would provide credibility to such program - instead it is more aimed to sell more ML computing power to the masses (who won't really understand how to use it to get meaningful results).

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

#57
post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 comp…

[deleted]

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

#58
post #42

I attended a conference talk of a FB AI-engineer talking about her paper with backprop equations so obviously wrong my eyes hurt, and incorrect definitions of objects. It did not stop her from participating (btw. this is always unclear -- who did what) in state-of-the art research in object detection. PhD is overrated in the deep learning context. It is more about forging the intellectual resilience and ability to pu…

> It is more about forging the intellectual resilience and ability to pursue ideas for months/years ...

Isn't this what a PhD generically signals?

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

#59

I wonder if Google is using this resource to train their own staff without PhD and after that allow them to work as ML engineers? That would provide credibility to such program - instead it is more aimed to sell more ML computing power to the masses (who won't really understand how to use it to get meaningful results).

not bloody likely...

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

#60
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…

Actually, making some things with ML has become really easy, google auto ml image recognition, or the equivalent with azure and amazon gives you a website to upload tagged images and builds a model based on it. If the problem to solve it's not very complicated (let say, room type recognition) it just works. The only problem is if you try to apply that model in volume, prepare for the costs.

In my case, I train my model with them and download to use on our machines without having to touch any ML related code.

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