Andrew Ng and his family on his graduation day
Jun 09, 2021

The Batch: Face Recognition at the Border, Robot Manicurists, Irresponsible AI, Synthesizing Real-World Scenes

Around the world, students are graduating. If you’re one of them, or if someone close to you is graduating, congratulations!!! My family swapped pictures on WhatsApp recently and came across this one, which was taken when I graduated from Carnegie Mellon (I’m standing in the middle).
Photograph of a two-way road in the woods
Jun 02, 2021

The Batch: Autonomous Weapons Used in Combat, Tesla Doubles Down on Computer Vision, Transformers Decipher Proteins

In school, most questions have only one right answer. But elsewhere, decisions often come down to a difficult choice among imperfect options. I’d like to share with you some approaches that have helped me make such decisions.
Conventional and data-centric benchmarks
May 26, 2021

The Batch: Face Recognition for the Masses, Labeling Libel, Documenting Datasets, What Machines Want to See

Benchmarks have been a significant driver of research progress in machine learning. But they've driven progress in model architecture, not approaches to building datasets, which can have a large impact on performance in practical applications.
Alert door widget
May 19, 2021

The Batch: Surgical Robots Go Autonomous, Virtual Reality On Speed, AI Crossword Champ, Algorithms For Orcas

I decided last weekend not to use a learning algorithm. Sometimes, a non-machine learning method works best. Now that my daughter is a little over two years old and highly mobile, I want to make sure the baby gate that keeps her away...
Pictures of Robert Crowe, Andrew Ng and Laurence Moroney (from left to right)
May 12, 2021

The Batch Special Issue! Machine Learning in Production: MLOps at scale with Amazon, Google, Microsoft

So you’ve trained an accurate neural network model in a Jupyter notebook. You should celebrate! But . . . now what? Machine learning engineering in production is an emerging discipline that helps individual engineers and teams put models into the hands of users.
Machine Learning project lifecycle
May 05, 2021

The Batch: Rise of the Robocoders, Banks Embrace Face Recognition, Toward Greener AI, Cloning 3D Objects

It can take 6 to 24 months to bring a machine learning project from concept to deployment, but a specialized development platform can make things go much fasterMy team at Landing AI has been working on a platform called LandingLens...
Iteration workflow
Apr 28, 2021

The Batch: Europe's AI Backlash, Robot Debater, Car Wreck Recognition, Funding For Biomedicine

How much data do you need to collect for a new machine learning project? If you’re working in a domain you’re familiar with, you may have a sense based on experience or from the literature. But when you’re working on a novel application, it’s hard to tell.
Calendar pages flying away
Apr 21, 2021

The Batch: Top AI Startups, Muting Griefers, Re-Creating Lost Masterpieces, Better Video Search

Last Sunday was my birthday. That got me thinking about the days leading to this one and those that may lie ahead.As a reader of The Batch, you’re probably pretty good at math. But let me ask you a question, and please answer from your gut, without calculating.
Lifecycle of an Machine Learning project
Apr 14, 2021

The Batch: Robots Supervise Robots, Bad Labels Plague Datasets, Large Language Models Learn Chinese, Transformers Assimilate GANs

Machine learning development is highly iterative. Rather than designing a grand system, spending months to build it, and then launching it and hoping for the best, it’s usually better to build a quick-and-dirty system, get feedback, and use that feedback to improve the system.
Chart with percent trust in tech sector vs. business
Apr 07, 2021

The Batch: Doctors Distrust AI, New Life For Old Songs, ImageNet Without Faces, Learning From Random Data

Each year, the public relations agency Edelman produces a report on the online public’s trust in social institutions like government, media, and business. The latest Edelman Trust Barometer contains a worrisome finding: While technology was ranked the most trusted industry in the U.S.
Celebration of Coursera being a publicly listed company
Mar 31, 2021

Tesla Under Investigation, Star Trek: The Chatbot, Attention For Vision Models, Spies Embrace AI

I have a two-year-old daughter, and am expecting my son to be born later this week. When I think about what we can do to build a brighter future for our children, the most important thing is...
System explaining an AI system
Mar 24, 2021

The Batch: Networking License Plate Readers, Calling Out Unreproducible Results, Seeing What the Brain Sees, Chatbots Against Depression

Earlier today, I spoke at a DeepLearning.AI event about MLOps, a field that aims to make building and deploying machine learning models more systematic. AI system development will...
Tents in the street
Mar 17, 2021

The Batch: Facebook's Algorithms Under Fire, Voice Clones Invade Entertainment, Old Drugs Fight New Illnesses, Auditors Assess AI

Over the past weekend, I happened to walk by a homeless encampment and went over to speak with some of the individuals there. I spoke with...
Blue speaking bubble in front of dozens of other speaking bubbles
Mar 10, 2021

The Batch: Bringing Great Great Grandma Back To Life, Drones Play Defense, AI For Business Booms, Synthesizing New Video Angles

Engineers need strong technical skills to be successful. But many underestimate the importance of developing strong communication skills as well. Many AI products are so...
How to scope AI projects slide
Mar 03, 2021

The Batch: Google Overhauls Ethics Team, Covid-19 Triage, Facebook Glasses, Data Science Jobs, Transformer Shoot-Out

One of the most important skills of an AI architect is the ability to identify ideas that are worth working on. Over the years, I’ve had fun applying machine learning to manufacturing, healthcare, climate change, agriculture, ecommerce, advertising, and...

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