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Deep Learning Business Models

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Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#11

Post by agibsonccc »

dj-wonk wrote: post #5

> Deep learning requires very large training sets, and these shouldn’t be shipped around a lot. To the extent that this is true, companies that offer these services may be driven to integrate more closely with customer data. This may involve custom in-house deployments or ways of getting the data in a cost-effective way from, say, Amazon S3, or wherever the data lives (HDFS, etc). This leads me to speculate on an add…

I think there is something to be said for the "deep learning gold rush" I'm one of the ones trying to cash in myself by being an independent player in the space with my own distributed deep learning framework[1].

The goal of data accessibility can be solved by an abstraction layer that auto vectorizes (transforms in to matrices) the needed data at runtime, trains the nets on that particular mini batch of data, and continues on.

That's what I'm trying to do with a concept of a DataSetIterator[2]. This understands how to pull in the data, and handles all the logistics while the runtime only knows about DataSetIterators.

I'm also partnering with a former cloudera engineer in the hadoop space to take on in process YARN deep learning[3]. Data should not be moved. It should be processed and left where it is. I'll be interested to see the innovations in this space in the coming years.

I don't believe deep learning as a service is the way to go, I think behind the firewall deep learning apps will be the way to go here.

[1]: http://deeplearning4j.org/

[2]: http://deeplearning4j.org/customdatasets.html

[3]: https://github.com/jpatanooga/Metronome

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#12

Post by agibsonccc »

robert_tweed wrote: post #10
motters wrote: post #4

I didn't know there was a deep learning gold rush. Maybe this explains the crazy number of stars on my libdeep library on Github, while there being no comments or issues raised. Deep learning is not any sort of magic bullet. It may be marginally better than other machine learning methods in specific contexts, but I'm not convinced that there are going to be any deep learning tycoons or deep learning entrepreneurs (we…

I've been noticing a slight trend among the same group of people that are likely to use the big data buzzword without really understanding it, to also use deep learning in the same way, to simply mean "gain business insights from [obviously big] data". As far as I know the only gold rush is around marketing surrounding this and related buzzwords, i.e., it's the latest thing that your business absolutely must be doing…

That's the exact market I'm cashing in on. But rather than just be someone in the space who talks about it, I made it[1].

I think at the end of the day, the stuff talked about in the media may or may not have some merit (otherwise why would google or these other companies put resources in to it?)

Rather than read the blogspam, read the papers instead though. Try to understand the merits of what's going on and apply it to your use case.

[1]: http://deeplearning4j.org/

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#13

Post by agibsonccc »

mirador wrote: post #7

Agreed, was unaware that there was a gold rush, anyone know about specific companies in this space that are still active?

Ersatz Labs is in the space, and we're in the process of launching as well [wait till tomorrow ;) ] At the end of the day, companies that focus on apps will be the ones that get bought or cash in. I don't think "machine learning" appeals to businesses. 30% more revenue because of a more accurate model sounds pretty good to me though.

[1]: http://www.ersatzlabs.com/

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#14

Post by mtrimpe »

motters wrote: post #4

I didn't know there was a deep learning gold rush. Maybe this explains the crazy number of stars on my libdeep library on Github, while there being no comments or issues raised. Deep learning is not any sort of magic bullet. It may be marginally better than other machine learning methods in specific contexts, but I'm not convinced that there are going to be any deep learning tycoons or deep learning entrepreneurs (we…

After watching 'Recent Developments in Deep Learning' by Geoff Hinton [1] a while ago I did come away believing that there does seem to be quite a bit of untapped potential in deep neural nets.

Do you feel that talk is overly optimistic/misleading? Or just that you don't think there's that much money to be made with it?

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

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#15

Post by convexing »

motters wrote: post #4

I didn't know there was a deep learning gold rush. Maybe this explains the crazy number of stars on my libdeep library on Github, while there being no comments or issues raised. Deep learning is not any sort of magic bullet. It may be marginally better than other machine learning methods in specific contexts, but I'm not convinced that there are going to be any deep learning tycoons or deep learning entrepreneurs (we…

Broadly speaking, the people who have significant, nontrivial expertise in the field is limited (to a first approximation) to

- students of Hinton/LeCun/Bengio/Ng, and/or

- members of Google/Facebook/Baidu's deep learning group.

An actual deep learning expert can have unrivalled access to infrastructure, excellent colleagues, data, and compensation, at any of Google/Facebook/Baidu etc.

Given this backdrop, it's less surprising that a significant number of the current crop of deep learning companies are unimpressive technologically - those with actual expertise have much better opportunities.

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#17

Post by dj-wonk »

motters wrote: post #4

I didn't know there was a deep learning gold rush. Maybe this explains the crazy number of stars on my libdeep library on Github, while there being no comments or issues raised. Deep learning is not any sort of magic bullet. It may be marginally better than other machine learning methods in specific contexts, but I'm not convinced that there are going to be any deep learning tycoons or deep learning entrepreneurs (we…

After seeing the term "gold rush" get thrown around, I compared a 19th century gold rush to a (supposed) deep learning / data-based gold rush in terms of economic terms (e.g. rivalry and excludability): http://djwonk.tumblr.com/post/87513512919/economics-of-a-sup...

UPDATE: My commentary may have conflated "data analytics" with "deep learning". I probably should disentangle them.

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#18

Post by motters »

mtrimpe wrote: post #14
motters wrote: post #4

I didn't know there was a deep learning gold rush. Maybe this explains the crazy number of stars on my libdeep library on Github, while there being no comments or issues raised. Deep learning is not any sort of magic bullet. It may be marginally better than other machine learning methods in specific contexts, but I'm not convinced that there are going to be any deep learning tycoons or deep learning entrepreneurs (we…

After watching 'Recent Developments in Deep Learning' by Geoff Hinton [1] a while ago I did come away believing that there does seem to be quite a bit of untapped potential in deep neural nets. Do you feel that talk is overly optimistic/misleading? Or just that you don't think there's that much money to be made with it? [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vShMxxqtDDs

I've also seen that talk. In many cases I think the advantages which may be had from deep learning are likely to be marginal - a few percent improvement over the next best algorithm. Multi-layer neural nets already existed for a couple of decades, and deep learning is really just a refinement on that, making the training process faster and more robust to overfitting.

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#19

Post by beaucronin »

agibsonccc wrote: post #12
robert_tweed wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been noticing a slight trend among the same group of people that are likely to use the big data buzzword without really understanding it, to also use deep learning in the same way, to simply mean "gain business insights from [obviously big] data". As far as I know the only gold rush is around marketing surrounding this and related buzzwords, i.e., it's the latest thing that your business absolutely must be doing…

That's the exact market I'm cashing in on. But rather than just be someone in the space who talks about it, I made it[1]. I think at the end of the day, the stuff talked about in the media may or may not have some merit (otherwise why would google or these other companies put resources in to it?) Rather than read the blogspam, read the papers instead though. Try to understand the merits of what's going on and apply i…

Blogspam? I demand satisfaction!

Re: Deep Learning Business Models

#20

Post by agibsonccc »

beaucronin wrote: post #19
agibsonccc wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the exact market I'm cashing in on. But rather than just be someone in the space who talks about it, I made it[1]. I think at the end of the day, the stuff talked about in the media may or may not have some merit (otherwise why would google or these other companies put resources in to it?) Rather than read the blogspam, read the papers instead though. Try to understand the merits of what's going on and apply i…

Blogspam? I demand satisfaction!

Let me clarify: Techcrunch articles talking about papers being published.

Blogspam to me is just something that talks about the stuff at such a high level, there's no meat in it. Within that subset I'm talking about academic concepts where you can learn a lot more if you just read the papers.

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