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Towards Data Science - 36. Max Welling - The future of machine learning
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36. Max Welling - The future of machine learning

Towards Data Science

06/03/20

41m

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For the last decade, advances in machine learning have come from two things: improved compute power and better algorithms. These two areas have become somewhat siloed in most people’s thinking: we tend to imagine that there are people who build hardware, and people who make algorithms, and that there isn’t much overlap between the two.

But this picture is wrong. Hardware constraints can and do inform algorithm design, and algorithms can be used to optimize hardware. Increasingly, compute and modelling are being optimized together, by people with expertise in both areas.

My guest today is one of the world’s leading experts on hardware/software integration for machine learning applications. Max Welling is a former physicist and currently works as VP Technologies at Qualcomm, a world-leading chip manufacturer, in addition to which he’s also a machine learning researcher with affiliations at UC Irvine, CIFAR and the University of Amsterdam.

Previous Episode

Coronavirus quarantines fundamentally change the dynamics of learning, and the dynamics of the job search. Just a few months ago, in-person bootcamps and college programs, live networking events where people exchanged handshakes and business cards were the way the world worked, but now, no longer. With that in mind, many aspiring techies are asking themselves how they should be adjusting their gameplan to keep up with learning or land that next job, given the constraints of an ongoing pandemic and impending economic downturn.

That’s why I wanted to talk to Rubén Harris, CEO and co-founder of Career Karma, a startup that helps aspiring developers find the best coding bootcamp for them. He’s got a great perspective to share on the special psychological and practical challenges of navigating self-learning and the job search, and he was kind enough to make the time to chat with me for this latest episode of the Towards Data Science podcast.

Next Episode

There’s been a lot of talk in data science circles about techniques like AutoML, which are dramatically reducing the time it takes for data scientists to train and tune models, and create reliable experiments. But that trend towards increased automation, greater robustness and reliability doesn’t end with machine learning: increasingly, companies are focusing their attention on automating earlier parts of the data lifecycle, including the critical task of data engineering.

Today, many data engineers are unicorns: they not only have to understand the needs of their customers, but also how to work with data, and what software engineering tools and best practices to use to set up and monitor their pipelines. Pipeline monitoring in particular is time-consuming, and just as important, isn’t a particularly fun thing to do. Luckily, people like Sean Knapp — a former Googler turned founder of data engineering startup Ascend.io — are leading the charge to make automated data pipeline monitoring a reality.

We had Sean on this latest episode of the Towards Data Science podcast to talk about data engineering: where it’s at, where it’s going, and what data scientists should really know about it to be prepared for the future.

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