AI-Powered Peer Programming with Vasi Philomin - #594
Today we’re joined by Vasi Philomin, vice president of AI services at AWS, joins us for our first in-person interview since 2019! In our conversation with Vasi, we discussed the recently released Amazon Code Whisperer, a developer-focused coding companion. We begin by exploring Vasi’s role and the various products under the banner of cognitive and non-cognitive services, and how those came together where Code Whisperer fits into the equation and some of the differences between Code Whisperer and some of the other recently released coding companions like GitHub Copilot. We also discuss the training corpus for the model, and how they’ve dealt with the potential issues of bias that arise when training LLMs with crawled web data, and Vasi’s thoughts on what the path of innovation looks like for Code Whisperer. At the end of our conversation, Vasi was gracious enough to share a quick live demo of Code Whisperer, so you can catch that here.
10 Loka 202235min
The Top 10 Reasons to Register for TWIMLcon: AI Platforms 2022!
TWIMLcon: AI Platforms 2022 is just a day away! If you're interested in all things MLOps and Platforms/Infrastructure technology, this is the event for you! Register now at https://twimlcon.com/attend for FREE!
3 Loka 20224min
Applied AI/ML Research at PayPal with Vidyut Naware - #593
Today we’re joined by Vidyut Naware, the director of machine learning and artificial intelligence at Paypal. As the leader of the ML/AI organization at Paypal, Vidyut is responsible for all things applied, from R&D to MLOps infrastructure. In our conversation, we explore the work being done in four major categories, hardware/compute, data, applied responsible AI, and tools, frameworks, and platforms. We also discuss their use of federated learning and delayed supervision models for use cases like anomaly detection and fraud prevention, research into quantum computing and causal inference, as well as applied use cases like graph machine learning and collusion detection. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/593
26 Syys 202231min
Assessing Data Quality at Shopify with Wendy Foster - #592
Today we’re back with another installment of our Data-Centric AI series, joined by Wendy Foster, a director of engineering & data science at Shopify. In our conversation with Wendy, we explore the differences between data-centric and model-centric approaches and how they manifest at Shopify, including on her team, which is responsible for utilizing merchant and product data to assist individual vendors on the platform. We discuss how they address, maintain, and improve data quality, emphasizing the importance of coverage and “freshness” data when solving constantly evolving use cases. Finally, we discuss how data is taxonomized at the company and the challenges that present themselves when producing large-scale ML models, future use cases that Wendy expects her team to tackle, and we briefly explore Merlin, Shopify’s new ML platform (that you can hear more about at TWIMLcon!), and how it fits into the broader scope of ML at the company. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/592
19 Syys 202236min
Transformers for Tabular Data at Capital One with Bayan Bruss - #591
Today we’re joined by Bayan Bruss, a Sr. director of applied ML research at Capital One. In our conversation with Bayan, we dig into his work in applying various deep learning techniques to tabular data, including taking advancements made in other areas like graph CNNs and other traditional graph mining algorithms and applying them to financial services applications. We discuss why despite a “flood” of innovation in the field, work on tabular data doesn’t elicit as much fanfare despite its broad use across businesses, Bayan’s experience with the difficulty of making deep learning work on tabular data, and what opportunities have been presented for the field with the emergence of multi-modality and transformer models. We also explore a pair of papers from Bayan’s team, focused on both transformers and transfer learning for tabular data. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/591
12 Syys 202246min
Understanding Collective Insect Communication with ML, w/ Orit Peleg - #590
Today we’re joined by Orit Peleg, an assistant professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder. Orit’s work focuses on understanding the behavior of disordered living systems, by merging tools from physics, biology, engineering, and computer science. In our conversation, we discuss how Orit found herself exploring problems of swarming behaviors and their relationship to distributed computing system architecture and spiking neurons. We look at two specific areas of research, the first focused on the patterns observed in firefly species, how the data is collected, and the types of algorithms used for optimization. Finally, we look at how Orit’s research with fireflies translates to a completely different insect, the honeybee, and what the next steps are for investigating these and other insect families. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/590
5 Syys 202237min
Multimodal, Multi-Lingual NLP at Hugging Face with John Bohannon and Douwe Kiela - #589
In this extra special episode of the TWIML AI Podcast, a friend of the show John Bohannon leads a jam-packed conversation with Hugging Face’s recently appointed head of research Douwe Kiela. In our conversation with Douwe, we explore his role at the company, how his perception of Hugging Face has changed since joining, and what research entails at the company. We discuss the emergence of the transformer model and the emergence of BERT-ology, the recent shift to solving more multimodal problems, the importance of this subfield as one of the “Grand Directions'' of Hugging Face’s research agenda, and the importance of BLOOM, the open-access Multilingual Language Model that was the output of the BigScience project. Finally, we get into how Douwe’s background in philosophy shapes his view of current projects, as well as his projections for the future of NLP and multimodal ML. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/589
29 Elo 202253min
Synthetic Data Generation for Robotics with Bill Vass - #588
Today we’re joined by Bill Vass, a VP of engineering at Amazon Web Services. Bill spoke at the most recent AWS re:MARS conference, where he delivered an engineering Keynote focused on some recent updates to Amazon sagemaker, including its support for synthetic data generation. In our conversation, we discussed all things synthetic data, including the importance of data quality when creating synthetic data, and some of the use cases that this data is being created for, including warehouses and in the case of one of their more recent acquisitions, iRobot, synthetic house generation. We also explore Astro, the household robot for home monitoring, including the types of models running it, is running, what type of on-device sensor suite it has, the relationship between the robot and the cloud, and the role of simulation. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/588
22 Elo 202236min
