Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜 with Emily Bender and Margaret Mitchell - #467
Today we’re joined by Emily M. Bender, Professor at the University of Washington, and AI Researcher, Margaret Mitchell. Emily and Meg, as well as Timnit Gebru and Angelina McMillan-Major, are co-authors on the paper On the Dangers of Stochastic Parrots: Can Language Models Be Too Big? 🦜. As most of you undoubtedly know by now, there has been much controversy surrounding, and fallout from, this paper. In this conversation, our main priority was to focus on the message of the paper itself. We spend some time discussing the historical context for the paper, then turn to the goals of the paper, discussing the many reasons why the ever-growing datasets and models are not necessarily the direction we should be going. We explore the cost of these training datasets, both literal and environmental, as well as the bias implications of these models, and of course the perpetual debate about responsibility when building and deploying ML systems. Finally, we discuss the thin line between AI hype and useful AI systems, and the importance of doing pre-mortems to truly flesh out any issues you could potentially come across prior to building models, and much much more. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/467.
24 Mar 202154min
Applying RL to Real-World Robotics with Abhishek Gupta - #466
Today we’re joined by Abhishek Gupta, a PhD Student at UC Berkeley. Abhishek, a member of the BAIR Lab, joined us to talk about his recent robotics and reinforcement learning research and interests, which focus on applying RL to real-world robotics applications. We explore the concept of reward supervision, and how to get robots to learn these reward functions from videos, and the rationale behind supervised experts in these experiments. We also discuss the use of simulation for experiments, data collection, and the path to scalable robotic learning. Finally, we discuss gradient surgery vs gradient sledgehammering, and his ecological RL paper, which focuses on the “phenomena that exist in the real world” and how humans and robotics systems interface in those situations. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/466.
22 Mar 202136min
Accelerating Innovation with AI at Scale with David Carmona - #465
Today we’re joined by David Carmona, General Manager of Artificial Intelligence & Innovation at Microsoft. In our conversation with David, we focus on his work on AI at Scale, an initiative focused on the change in the ways people are developing AI, driven in large part by the emergence of massive models. We explore David’s thoughts about the progression towards larger models, the focus on parameters and how it ties to the architecture of these models, and how we should assess how attention works in these models. We also discuss the different families of models (generation & representation), the transition from CV to NLP tasks, and an interesting point of models “becoming a platform” via transfer learning. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/465.
18 Mar 202148min
Complexity and Intelligence with Melanie Mitchell - #464
Today we’re joined by Melanie Mitchell, Davis Professor at the Santa Fe Institute and author of Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans. While Melanie has had a long career with a myriad of research interests, we focus on a few, complex systems and the understanding of intelligence, complexity, and her recent work on getting AI systems to make analogies. We explore examples of social learning, and how it applies to AI contextually, and defining intelligence. We discuss potential frameworks that would help machines understand analogies, established benchmarks for analogy, and if there is a social learning solution to help machines figure out analogy. Finally we talk through the overall state of AI systems, the progress we’ve made amid the limited concept of social learning, if we’re able to achieve intelligence with current approaches to AI, and much more! The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/464.
15 Mar 202132min
Robust Visual Reasoning with Adriana Kovashka - #463
Today we’re joined by Adriana Kovashka, an Assistant Professor at the University of Pittsburgh. In our conversation with Adriana, we explore her visual commonsense research, and how it intersects with her background in media studies. We discuss the idea of shortcuts, or faults in visual question answering data sets that appear in many SOTA results, as well as the concept of masking, a technique developed to assist in context prediction. Adriana then describes how these techniques fit into her broader goal of trying to understand the rhetoric of visual advertisements. Finally, Adriana shares a bit about her work on robust visual reasoning, the parallels between this research and other work happening around explainability, and the vision for her work going forward. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at twimlai.com/go/463.
11 Mar 202141min
Architectural and Organizational Patterns in Machine Learning with Nishan Subedi - #462
Today we’re joined by Nishan Subedi, VP of Algorithms at Overstock.com. In our conversation with Nishan, we discuss his interesting path to MLOps and how ML/AI is used at Overstock, primarily for search/recommendations and marketing/advertisement use cases. We spend a great deal of time exploring machine learning architecture and architectural patterns, how he perceives the differences between architectural patterns and algorithms, and emergent architectural patterns that standards have not yet been set for. Finally, we discuss how the idea of anti-patterns was innovative in early design pattern thinking and if those concepts are transferable to ML, if architectural patterns will bleed over into organizational patterns and culture, and Nishan introduces us to the concept of Squads within an organizational structure. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/462.
8 Mar 202157min
Common Sense Reasoning in NLP with Vered Shwartz - #461
Today we’re joined by Vered Shwartz, a Postdoctoral Researcher at both the Allen Institute for AI and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. In our conversation with Vered, we explore her NLP research, where she focuses on teaching machines common sense reasoning in natural language. We discuss training using GPT models and the potential use of multimodal reasoning and incorporating images to augment the reasoning capabilities. Finally, we talk through some other noteworthy research in this field, how she deals with biases in the models, and Vered's future plans for incorporating some of the newer techniques into her future research. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/461.
4 Mar 202137min
How to Be Human in the Age of AI with Ayanna Howard - #460
Today we’re joined by returning guest and newly appointed Dean of the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University, Ayanna Howard. Our conversation with Dr. Howard focuses on her recently released book, Sex, Race, and Robots: How to Be Human in the Age of AI, which is an extension of her research on the relationships between humans and robots. We continue to explore this relationship through the themes of socialization introduced in the book, like associating genders to AI and robotic systems and the “self-fulfilling prophecy” that has become search engines. We also discuss a recurring conversation in the community around AI being biased because of data versus models and data, and the choices and responsibilities that come with the ethical aspects of building AI systems. Finally, we discuss Dr. Howard’s new role at OSU, how it will affect her research, and what the future holds for the applied AI field. The complete show notes for this episode can be found at https://twimlai.com/go/460.
1 Mar 202135min
