Practical AI

By Daniel Whitenack and Chris BensonTechnology

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Typical duration
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Practical AI episodes

April 02, 2019The landscape of AI infrastructure
Being that this is “practical” AI, we decided that it would be good to take time to discuss various aspects of AI infrastructure. In this full-connected episode, we discuss our personal/local infrastructure along with trends in AI, including infra for training, serving, and data management.

Sponsors:
DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated vCPU Droplets with dedicated vCPU threads. Get started for free with a $100 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog.
DataEngPodcast – A podcast about data engineering and modern data infrastructure.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Our locally installed stuff:
Jupyter
Docker
Python
Go
Postman
Where we see AI workflows running:
AWS
GCP
Azure
Kubernetes and KubeFlow
On-prem workstations:
NVIDIA
Lambda Labs
System76
Experimentation / model development:
JupyterLab
Google Colaboratory
AWS SageMaker
Data Science platforms:
Domino
DataBricks
DataRobot
H2O.ai
Pipelining and automation:
Pachyderm
Airflow
Luigi
Model optimization:
OpenVino
TensorRT
TensorFlow Lite
Serving:
MXNet
TensorFlow serving
Seldon
Monitoring/visibility:
TensorBoard
Netron
Knock knock
Prometheus
ElasticSearch
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
52 min
March 25, 2019Growing up to become a world-class AI expert
While at the NVIDIA GPU Technology Conference 2019 in Silicon Valley, Chris enjoyed an inspiring conversation with Anima Anandkumar. Clearly a role model - not only for women - but for anyone in the world of AI, Anima relayed how her lifelong passion for mathematics and engineering started when she was only 3 years old in India, and ultimately led to her pioneering deep learning research at Amazon Web Services, CalTech, and NVIDIA.

Sponsors:
DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated vCPU Droplets with dedicated vCPU threads. Get started for free with a $100 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog.
DataEngPodcast – A podcast about data engineering and modern data infrastructure.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
Anima Anandkumar – Website, LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Anima Anandkumar on Wikipedia
NVIDIA GTC Speaker
NVIDIA GTC Presentation: Role of Tensors in Machine Learning
NVIDIA GTC Presentation: Infusing Physics into Deep Learning Algorithms with Applications to Stable Landing of Drones
CalTech CMS TensorLab
Google Scholar
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
1 hr 6 min
March 18, 2019Social AI with Hugging Face
Clément Delangue, the co-founder & CEO of Hugging Face, joined us to discuss fun, social, and conversational AI. Clem explained why social AI is important, what products they are building (social AIs who learn to chit-chat, talk sassy and trades selfies with you), and how this intersects with the latest research in AI for natural language. He also shared his vision for how AI for natural language with develop over the next few years.

Sponsors:
DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated vCPU Droplets with dedicated vCPU threads. Get started for free with a $100 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog.
GitPrime – Download GitPrime’s 20 Patterns book, a field guide to help engineering managers recognize achievement, spot bottlenecks, and debug development processes with data.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
Clément Delangue – Website, LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Hugging Face
Voice Boloss
Transformer model episodes:
BERT
GPT-2
Hugging Face’s Pytorch pre-trained model repo
Rasa
Lyrebird
Allen Institute for AI
AllenNLP
OpenAI
Fast.ai
Betaworks Synthetic camp
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
40 min
March 11, 2019The White House Executive Order on AI
The White House recently published an “Executive Order on Maintaining American Leadership in Artificial Intelligence.” In this fully connected episode, we discuss the executive order in general and criticism from the AI community. We also draw some comparisons between this US executive order and other national strategies for leadership in AI.

Sponsors:
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Relevant learning resources:
AI for Everyone
Intel AI list of Ethics toolkits
Government data
Federal data portal
Chicago data portal
References / notes:
The White House Executive Order
4 Experts Respond to Trump’s Executive Order on AI
Trump’s executive order on AI, explained
Trump to launch artificial intelligence initiative, but many details lacking (Science)
National AI strategies overview (Medium article)
China Is Leading in Artificial Intelligence–and American Businesses Should Take Note
China plans to be a world leader in Artificial Intelligence by 2030
Global AI talent Report
SUMMARY OF THE 2018 DEPARTMENT OF DEFENSE ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE STRATEGY: Harnessing AI to Advance Our Security and Prosperity
Artificial Intelligence Is Now a Pentagon Priority. Will Silicon Valley Help?
DOD Takes Strategic Approach to Artificial Intelligence
Books
“AI Superpowers” by Kai-Fu Lee
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
41 min
March 04, 2019Staving off disaster through AI safety research
While covering Applied Machine Learning Days in Switzerland, Chris met El Mahdi El Mhamdi by chance, and was fascinated with his work doing AI safety research at EPFL. El Mahdi agreed to come on the show to share his research into the vulnerabilities in machine learning that bad actors can take advantage of. We cover everything from poisoned data sets and hacked machines to AI-generated propaganda and fake news, so grab your James Bond 007 kit from Q Branch, and join us for this important conversation on the dark side of artificial intelligence.

Sponsors:
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
El Mahdi El Mhamdi – Website, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
El Mahdi El Mhamdi on LinkedIn
Google Scholar
Personal blog
World Health Organization | Ten threats to global health in 2019
AggregaThor
The Hidden Vulnerability of Distributed Learning in Byzantium
Machine Learning with Adversaries: Byzantine Tolerant Gradient Descent
Asynchronous Byzantine Machine Learning (the case of SGD)
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
51 min
February 25, 2019OpenAI's new "dangerous" GPT-2 language model
This week we discuss GPT-2, a new transformer-based language model from OpenAI that has everyone talking. It’s capable of generating incredibly realistic text, and the AI community has lots of concerns about potential malicious applications. We help you understand GPT-2 and we discuss ethical concerns, responsible release of AI research, and resources that we have found useful in learning about language models.

Sponsors:
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Relevant learning resources:
Jay Alammar “Illustrated” blog articles:
The illustrated transformer
The illustrated BERT, elmo, and co
Machine Learning Explained blog:
An In-Depth Tutorial to AllenNLP (From Basics to ELMo and BERT)
Paper Dissected: “BERT: Pre-training of Deep Bidirectional Transformers for Language Understanding” Explained
References/notes:
GPT-2 blog post from OpenAI
GPT-2 Paper
GPT-2 GitHub Repo
GPT-2 PyTorch implementation
Episode 22 of Practical AI about BERT
OpenAI’s GPT-2: the model, the hype, and the controversy (towardsdatascience)
The AI Text Generator That’s Too Dangerous to Make Public (Wired)
Transformer paper
Preparing for malicious uses of AI (OpenAI blog)
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
41 min
February 20, 2019AI for social good at Intel
While at Applied Machine Learning Days in Lausanne, Switzerland, Chris had an inspiring conversation with Anna Bethke, Head of AI for Social Good at Intel. Anna reveals how she started the AI for Social Good program at Intel, and goes on to share the positive impact this program has had - from stopping animal poachers, to helping the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children. Through this AI for Social Good program, Intel clearly demonstrates how a for-profit business can effectively use AI to make the world a better place for us all.

Sponsors:
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Featuring:
Anna Bethke – LinkedIn, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
AI for Social Good at Intel
National Center for Missing & Exploited Children
Data for Democracy
Data Kind
Delta Analytics
Driven Data
Partnership on AI
Tech Jobs for Good
Applied Machine Learning Days
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
38 min
February 13, 2019GirlsCoding.org empowers young women to embrace computer science
Chris sat down with Marta Martinez-Cámara and Miranda Kreković to learn how GirlsCoding.org is inspiring 9–16-year-old girls to learn about computer science. The site is successfully empowering young women to recognize computer science as a valid career choice through hands-on workshops, role models, and by smashing prevalent gender stereotypes. This is an episode that you’ll want to listen to with your daughter!

Sponsors:
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Featuring:
Marta Martinez-Cámara – Website
Miranda Kreković – Website
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
GirlsCoding.org
GirlsCoding.org on Twitter
GirlsCoding.org on LinkedIn
GirlsCoding on Facebook
GirlsCoding.org at Applied Machine Learning Days
Applied Machine Learning Days
École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
41 min
February 04, 2019How Microsoft is using AI to help the Earth
Chris caught up with Jennifer Marsman, Principal Engineer on the AI for Earth team at Microsoft, right before her speech at Applied Machine Learning Days 2019 in Lausanne, Switzerland. She relayed how the team came into being, what they do, and some of the good deeds they have done for Mother Earth. They are giving away $50 million (US) in grants over five years! It was another excellent example of AI for good!

Sponsors:
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Featuring:
Jennifer Marsman – GitHub, X
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Show Notes:
Jennifer Marsman’s blog
AI for Earth
Project Premonition (mosquitos/genomics)
FarmBeats (agriculture)
Wildbook (recognizing individual animals) #1
Wildbook (recognizing individual animals) #2
Repository of data sets
Microsoft Green Twitter
Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
45 min
January 28, 2019New year’s resolution: dive into deep learning!
Fully Connected – a series where Chris and Daniel keep you up to date with everything that’s happening in the AI community.
If you’re anything like us, your New Year’s resolutions probably included an AI section, so this week we explore some of the learning resources available for artificial intelligence and deep learning. Where you go with it depends upon what you want to achieve, so we discuss academic versus industry career paths, and try to set you on the Practical AI path that will help you level up.

Sponsors:
Fastly – Our bandwidth partner. Fastly powers fast, secure, and scalable digital experiences. Move beyond your content delivery network to their powerful edge cloud platform. Learn more at fastly.com.
Rollbar – We move fast and fix things because of Rollbar. Resolve errors in minutes. Deploy with confidence. Learn more at rollbar.com/changelog.
Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2018. Start your server - head to linode.com/changelog
Algolia – Our search partner. Algolia’s full suite search APIs enable teams to develop unique search and discovery experiences across all platforms and devices. We’re using Algolia to power our site search here at Changelog.com. Get started for free and learn more at algolia.com.
Featuring:
Chris Benson – Website, GitHub, LinkedIn, X
Daniel Whitenack – Website, GitHub, X
Show Notes:
Courses
Amazon Machine Learning with AWS
Google Machine Learning Crash Course with TensorFlow APIs
Microsoft Professional Program for Artificial Intelligence
Coursera / deeplearning.ai
NVIDIA Deep Learning Institute
Google, Amazon, Microsoft: How do their free machine-learning courses compare?
Stanford Machine Learning Videos on YouTube
Books
“Deep Learning” by Ian Goodfellow, Yoshua Bengio, and Aaron Courville
“Natural Language Processing with PyTorch” by Delip Rao and Brian McMahan
“Machine Learning With Go” by Daniel Whitenack and Janani Selvaraj
(Daniel is too humble to put his own book in this list, so Chris inserted it above without Daniel’s knowledge - because it’s a damn fine book!)
Hybrid resources
Machine learning with TensorFlow crash course
Intro to deep learning with PyTorch
Spinning Up in Deep RL
Meetups
PyData
Atlanta Deep Learning Meetup

Upcoming Events:
Register for upcoming webinars here!
36 min

About Practical AI

From the publisher's feed

Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more).