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Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

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Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#31
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

> Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? The people doing this aren't magical geniuses; they've just put the time and work into the subject and have been able to get themselves into a position they can do this all day surrounded by others they can collaborate with. As with most human endeavors, the trick is to just get started, and not get frustrated and give up w…

> The people doing this aren't magical geniuses

Says the person named 'magicalist'. :)

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#32
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

> Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? The people doing this aren't magical geniuses; they've just put the time and work into the subject and have been able to get themselves into a position they can do this all day surrounded by others they can collaborate with. As with most human endeavors, the trick is to just get started, and not get frustrated and give up w…

I completed that course awhile back. Definitely a really great course if you can keep up. It is quite difficult, and I was quite terrible at it.

I don't think I have any affinity for the topic, but at least now I can read/discuss the topic without being completely blind. There are also a lot of smaller components in the course that I found useful even not working directly in AI/ML. Just some general data modelling and linear algebra stuff was nice to pick up on the ride.

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#33
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

1. Don't sell yourself short.

2. Start small. Really small. Tinker with tutorials. See what happens when you change stuff around.

3. Read the documentation with another browser tab open to look up definitions.

4. Don't be afraid of the math. Its your friend. If it feels too complicated (it happens to all) then look for tutorials / online help on forums to figure it out.

5. Realize that nobody knows much about AI. Its still being developed. Pompous people will try and make themselves look smart by making it seem like they know a lot about it. They might know a lot of what we collectively know about AI, but they don't know a lot about it. No one does.

PS. I'm currently working in AI applications and this is how I started. Don't believe the hype.

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#34

This is very timely for me. Right at the moment I'm working on image segmentation for medical imaging. If I can draft off tech developed to sell more ads to do some good I'm all for it.

I have a colleague working on something similar, drop me an email and I'll introduce you.

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#35
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

ML can be an useful skill for developer. Think of it as of linux / sysadmin skills, or as web design / UI skills - they are all quite different from software development, but many software devs have them. I think that applied ML slowly becomes a similar thing - an useful tool in a toolbelt.

It takes time to become really good at it, but basics are relatively easy to aquire. Libraries and learning resources are much better now than they used to be. You can totally learn how to apply ML using just scikit-learn tutorials. Coursera ML course gives a nice introduction. For deep learning check an awesome http://www.deeplearningbook.org/ and try to implement what you're reading about e.g. using https://github.com/Theano/Theano.

The world of AI is enormous indeed, tens of new worthwhile papers are published every day. Just reading them can be a full-time job, but you don't have to know all state-of-the-arts techniques to be dangerous. Over time it will become easier to read new papers, and you will start to realize how are ideas related. Often a paper provides just a small tweak for a known algorithm, or combines existing "building blocks" in a new way.

As with all skills, it takes time to become good at it, but there is nothing to be scared of. Keep learning, do something practical every week. If you don't have problems at hand to solve using ML, register at kaggle.com. There is more to learn than e.g. in devops, but everyone can do it.

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For basic use, you can construct text vectors faster/better than word2vec/doc2vec. The Python package which serves as an API to fasttext ( https://pypi.python.org/pypi/fasttext/0.7.2 ) is well documented, is constantly being updated, and is easy to use.

Does/can fastText use GPGPU at all? I use a CUDA cbow word2vec [1] that is really quick, and has served me quite well. Hard to know if switching to something more accurate would be worth giving up the speed :) [1] https://github.com/ChenglongChen/word2vec_cbow

fastText is so fast, you may not need to use the GPU. That was their goal from the very beginning.

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#38
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

Email me if you're interested in working on things like this. alexandersfarley at gmail.com. I'm working on segmentation in the context of traffic counting.

Web traffic or road traffic?

Re: Facebook AI Research Team Open Source DeepMask and SharpMask

#39
post #6

Is there any way for those of us with average intelligence to contribute to tools like this? I know I'm a decent developer, but I feel entirely entirely inadequate to participate in this enormous, scary world of AI.

Don't give up! Check me out, I consider myself a decent developer but I've done almost NOTHING with AI and ML. Guess what my side project / prospective company is? I'm working on an AI. Haha. Seriously [1]

I still don't know a ton but I'm fumbling my way through it working towards my end goal. If I can start working through it and figure it out I don't see why any developer couldn't!

Also never forget the golden rule: largely no one really knows what they're doing. Sure we have AI / ML experts and me saying they don't know what they're doing is insulting but overall people rarely know everything that they're doing or how to specifically accomplish a goal. Most of the times it's a haze and you work through it.

[1] https://www.simex.io (sorry, shameless plug but it seemed relevant! Anyone can get into this category)

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