The TWIML AI Podcast (formerly This Week in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence)

Latest Episodes:

Feature Stores for MLOps with Mike del Balso - #420 Oct 19, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Mike del Balso, co-Founder and CEO of Tecton.

Mike, who you might remember from our last conversation on the podcast, was a foundational member of the Uber team that created their ML platform, Michelangelo. Since his departure from the company in 2018, he has been busy building up Tecton, and their enterprise feature store.

In our conversation, Mike walks us through why he chose to focus on the feature store aspects of the machine learning platform, the journey, personal and otherwise, to operationalizing machine learning, and the capabilities that more mature platforms teams tend to look for or need to build. We also explore the differences between standalone components and feature stores, if organizations are taking their existing databases and building feature stores with them, and what a dynamic, always available feature store looks like in deployment.

Finally, we explore what sets Tecton apart from other vendors in this space, including enterprise cloud providers who are throwing their hat in the ring.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/420.

Thanks to our friends at Tecton for sponsoring this episode of the podcast! Find out more about what they're up to at tecton.ai.

Exploring Causality and Community with Suzana Ilić - #419 Oct 16, 2020

Show notes

In this special #TWIMLfest episode, we’re joined by Suzana Ilić, a computational linguist at Causaly and founder of Machine Learning Tokyo (MLT).

Suzana joined us as a keynote speaker to discuss the origins of the MLT community, but we cover a lot of ground in this conversation. We briefly discuss Suzana’s work at Causaly, touching on her experiences transitioning from linguist and domain expert to working with causal modeling, balancing her role as both product manager and leader of the development team for their causality extraction module, and the unique ways that she thinks about UI in relation to their product.

We also spend quite a bit of time exploring MLT, including how they’ve achieved exponential growth within the community over the past few years and when Suzana knew MLT was moving beyond just a personal endeavor, her experiences publishing papers at major ML conferences as an independent organization, and inspires her within the broader ML/AI Community. And of course, we answer quite a few great questions from our live audience!

Decolonizing AI with Shakir Mohamed - #418 Oct 14, 2020

Show notes

In this special #TWIMLfest edition of the podcast, we’re joined by Shakir Mohamed, a Senior Research Scientist at DeepMind.

Shakir is also a leader of Deep Learning Indaba, a non-profit organization whose mission is to Strengthen African Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence. In our conversation with Shakir, we discuss his recent paper ‘Decolonial AI,’ the distinction between decolonizing AI and ethical AI, while also exploring the origin of the Indaba, the phases of community, and much more.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/418.

Spatial Analysis for Real-Time Video Processing with Adina Trufinescu Oct 08, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Adina Trufinescu, Principal Program Manager at Microsoft, to discuss some of the computer vision updates announced at Ignite 2020.

We focus on the technical innovations that went into their recently announced spatial analysis software, and the software’s use cases including the movement of people within spaces, distance measurements (social distancing), and more.

We also discuss the ‘responsible AI guidelines’ put in place to curb bad actors potentially using this software for surveillance, what techniques are being used to do object detection and image classification, and the challenges to productizing this research.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/417.

How Deep Learning has Revolutionized OCR with Cha Zhang - #416 Oct 05, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Cha Zhang, a Partner Engineering Manager at Microsoft Cloud & AI.

Cha’s work at MSFT is focused on exploring ways that new technologies can be applied to optical character recognition, or OCR, pushing the boundaries of what has been seen as an otherwise ‘solved’ problem. In our conversation with Cha, we explore some of the traditional challenges of doing OCR in the wild, and what are the ways in which deep learning algorithms are being applied to transform these solutions.

We also discuss the difficulties of using an end to end pipeline for OCR work, if there is a semi-supervised framing that could be used for OCR, the role of techniques like neural architecture search, how advances in NLP could influence the advancement of OCR problems, and much more.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/416.

Machine Learning for Food Delivery at Global Scale - #415 Oct 02, 2020

Show notes

In this special edition of the show, we discuss the various ways in which machine learning plays a role in helping businesses overcome their challenges in the food delivery space. A few weeks ago Sam had the opportunity to moderate a panel at the Prosus AI Marketplace virtual event with Sandor Caetano of iFood, Dale Vaz of Swiggy, Nicolas Guenon of Delivery Hero, and Euro Beinat of Prosus. In this conversation, panelists describe the application of machine learning to a variety of business use cases, including how they deliver recommendations, the unique ways they handle the logistics of deliveries, and fraud and abuse prevention.

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/415.

Open Source at Qualcomm AI Research with Jeff Gehlhaar and Zahra Koochak - #414 Sep 30, 2020

Show notes

Today we're joined by Jeff Gehlhaar, VP of Technology at Qualcomm, and Zahra Koochak, Staff Machine Learning Engineer at Qualcomm AI Research.

If you haven’t had a chance to listen to our first interview with Jeff, I encourage you to check it out here! In this conversation, we catch up with Jeff and Zahra to get an update on what the company has up to since our last conversation, including the Snapdragon 865 chipset and Hexagon Neural Network Direct.

We also discuss open-source projects like the AI efficiency toolkit and Tensor Virtual Machine compiler, and how these projects fit in the broader Qualcomm ecosystem. Finally, we talk through their vision for on-device federated learning.

The complete show notes for this page can be found at twimlai.com/go/414.

Visualizing Climate Impact with GANs w/ Sasha Luccioni - #413 Sep 28, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Sasha Luccioni, a Postdoctoral Researcher at the MILA Institute, and moderator of our upcoming TWIMLfest Panel, ‘Machine Learning in the Fight Against Climate Change.’

We were first introduced to Sasha’s work through her paper on ‘Visualizing The Consequences Of Climate Change Using Cycle-consistent Adversarial Networks’, and we’re excited to pick her brain about the ways ML is currently being leveraged to help the environment. In our conversation, we explore the use of GANs to visualize the consequences of climate change, the evolution of different approaches she used, and the challenges of training GANs using an end-to-end pipeline.

Finally, we talk through Sasha’s goals for the aforementioned panel, which is scheduled for Friday, October 23rd at 1 pm PT. Register for all of the great TWIMLfest sessions at twimlfest.com!

The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/413.

ML-Powered Language Learning at Duolingo with Burr Settles - #412 Sep 24, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Burr Settles, Research Director at Duolingo. Most would acknowledge that one of the most effective ways to learn is one on one with a tutor, and Duolingo’s main goal is to replicate that at scale.

In our conversation with Burr, we dig how the business model has changed over time, the properties that make a good tutor, and how those features translate to the AI tutor they’ve built. We also discuss the Duolingo English Test, and the challenges they’ve faced with maintaining the platform while adding languages and courses.

Check out the complete show notes for this episode at twimlai.com/go/412.

Bridging The Gap Between Machine Learning and the Life Sciences with Artur Yakimovich - #411 Sep 21, 2020

Show notes

Today we’re joined by Artur Yakimovich, Co-Founder at Artificial Intelligence for Life Sciences and a visiting scientist in the Lab for Molecular Cell Biology at University College London. In our conversation with Artur, we explore the gulf that exists between life science researchers and the tools and applications used by computer scientists.

While Artur’s background is in viral chemistry, he has since transitioned to a career in computational biology to “see where chemistry stopped, and biology started.” We discuss his work in that middle ground, looking at quite a few of his recent work applying deep learning and advanced neural networks like capsule networks to his research problems.

Finally, we discuss his efforts building the Artificial Intelligence for Life Sciences community, a non-profit organization he founded to bring scientists from different fields together to share ideas and solve interdisciplinary problems.

Check out the complete show notes at twimlai.com/go/411.

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