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Practical AI

Practical AI LLCpracticalai.fm
Making artificial intelligence practical, productive & accessible to everyone. Practical AI is a show in which technology professionals, business people, students, enthusiasts, and expert guests engage in lively discussions about Artificial Intelligence and related topics (Machine Learning, Deep Learning, Neural Networks, GANs, MLOps, AIOps, LLMs & more). The focus is on productive implementations and real-world scenarios that are accessible to everyone. If you want to keep up with the latest advances in AI, while keeping one foot in the real world, then this is the show for you!
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Episodes

Exploring NVIDIA's Ampere & the A100 GPU

On the heels of NVIDIA’s latest announcements, Daniel and Chris explore how the new NVIDIA Ampere architecture evolves the high-performance computing (HPC) landscape for artificial intelligence. After investigating the new specifications of the NVIDIA A100 Tensor Core GPU, Chris and Daniel turn their attention to the data center with the NVIDIA DGX A100, and then finish their journey at “the edge” with the NVIDIA EGX A100 and the NVIDIA Jetson Xavier NX. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice an...

May 26, 202053 minEp. 90

AI for Good: clean water access in Africa

Chandler McCann tells Daniel and Chris about how DataRobot engaged in a project to develop sustainable water solutions with the Global Water Challenge (GWC). They analyzed over 500,000 data points to predict future water point breaks. This enabled African governments to make data-driven decisions related to budgeting, preventative maintenance, and policy in order to promote and protect people’s access to safe water for drinking and washing. From this effort sprang DataRobot’s larger AI for Good ...

May 11, 202043 minEp. 89

Ask us anything (about AI)

Daniel and Chris get you Fully-Connected with AI questions from listeners and online forums: What do you think is the next big thing? What are CNNs? How does one start developing an AI-enabled business solution? What tools do you use every day? What will AI replace? And more… Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team accounts, worldwide availability with ...

May 04, 202051 minEp. 88

Reinforcement learning for chip design

Daniel and Chris have a fascinating discussion with Anna Goldie and Azalia Mirhoseini from Google Brain about the use of reinforcement learning for chip floor planning - or placement - in which many new designs are generated, and then evaluated, to find an optimal component layout. Anna and Azalia also describe the use of graph convolutional neural networks in their approach. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server f...

Apr 27, 202045 minEp. 87

Exploring the COVID-19 Open Research Dataset

In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, Daniel and Chris have a timely conversation with Lucy Lu Wang of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence about COVID-19 Open Research Dataset (CORD-19). She relates how CORD-19 was created and organized, and how researchers around the world are currently using the data to answer important COVID-19 questions that will help the world through this ongoing crisis. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, effic...

Apr 20, 202044 minEp. 86

Achieving provably beneficial, human-compatible AI

AI legend Stuart Russell, the Berkeley professor who leads the Center for Human-Compatible AI , joins Chris to share his insights into the future of artificial intelligence. Stuart is the author of Human Compatible , and the upcoming 4th edition of his perennial classic Artificial Intelligence: A Modern Approach , which is widely regarded as the standard text on AI. After exposing the shortcomings inherent in deep learning, Stuart goes on to propose a new practitioner approach to creating AI tha...

Apr 13, 202053 minEp. 85

COVID-19 Q&A and CORD-19

So many AI developers are coming up with creative, useful COVID-19 applications during this time of crisis. Among those are Timo from Deepset-AI and Tony from Intel. They are working on a question answering system for pandemic-related questions called COVID-QA. In this episode, they describe the system, related annotation of the CORD-19 data set, and ways that you can contribute! Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you gr...

Apr 06, 202054 minEp. 84

Mapping the intersection of AI and GIS

Daniel Wilson and Rob Fletcher of ESRI hang with Chris and Daniel to chat about how AI powered modern geographic information systems (GIS) and location intelligence. They illuminate the various models used for GIS, spatial analysis, remote sensing, real-time visualization, and 3D analytics. You don’t want to miss the part about their work for the DoD’s Joint AI Center in humanitarian assistance / disaster relief. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch i...

Mar 30, 202050 minEp. 83

Welcome to Practical AI

Practical AI is a weekly podcast that’s marking artificial intelligence practical, productive, and accessible to everyone. If world of AI affects your daily life, this show is for you. From the practitioner wanting to keep up with the latest tools & trends… (clip from episode #68 ) To the AI curious trying to understand the concepts at play and their implications on our lives… (clip from episode #39 ) Expert hosts Chris Benson and Daniel Whitenack are here to keep you fully-connected with th...

Mar 25, 20202 min

Speech recognition to say it just right

Catherine Breslin of Cobalt joins Daniel and Chris to do a deep dive on speech recognition. She also discusses how the technology is integrated into virtual assistants (like Alexa) and is used in other non-assistant contexts (like transcription and captioning). Along the way, she teaches us how to assemble a lexicon, acoustic model, and language model to bring speech recognition to life. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cl...

Mar 23, 202049 minEp. 82

Building a career in Data Science

Emily Robinson, co-author of the book Build a Career in Data Science , gives us the inside scoop about optimizing the data science job search. From creating one’s resume, cover letter, and portfolio to knowing how to recognize the right job at a fair compensation rate. Emily’s expert guidance takes us from the beginning of the process to conclusion, including being successful during your early days in that fantastic new data science position. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home o...

Mar 16, 202051 minEp. 81

What exactly is "data science" these days?

Matt Brems from General Assembly joins us to explain what “data science” actually means these days and how that has changed over time. He also gives us some insight into how people are going about data science education, how AI fits into the data science workflow, and how to differentiate yourself career-wise. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intuitive control panel, predictable pricing, team acc...

Mar 09, 202049 minEp. 80

TensorFlow in the cloud

Craig Wiley, from Google Cloud, joins us to discuss various pieces of the TensorFlow ecosystem along with TensorFlow Enterprise. He sheds light on how enterprises are utilizing AI and supporting AI-driven applications in the Cloud. He also clarifies Google’s relationship to TensorFlow and explains how TensorFlow development is impacting Google Cloud Platform. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud and scale up as you grow. They have an intu...

Mar 02, 202048 minEp. 79

NLP for the world's 7000+ languages

Expanding AI technology to the local languages of emerging markets presents huge challenges. Good data is scarce or non-existent. Users often have bandwidth or connectivity issues. Existing platforms target only a small number of high-resource languages. Our own Daniel Whitenack (data scientist at SIL International) and Dan Jeffries (from Pachyderm) discuss how these and related problems will only be solved when AI technology and resources from industry are combined with linguistic expertise fro...

Feb 24, 202055 minEp. 78

Real-time conversational insights from phone call data

Daniel and Chris hang out with Mike McCourt from Invoca to learn about the natural language processing model architectures underlying Signal AI . Mike shares how they process conversational data, the challenges they have to overcome, and the types of insights that can be harvested. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud of choice and the home of Changelog.com. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free using the code changelog2019 OR changelog2020. To learn more...

Feb 17, 202052 minEp. 77

AI-powered scientific exploration and discovery

Daniel and Chris explore Semantic Scholar with Doug Raymond of the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence. Semantic Scholar is an AI-backed search engine that uses machine learning, natural language processing, and machine vision to surface relevant information from scientific papers. Featuring: Douglas Raymond – GitHub , LinkedIn , X Chris Benson – Website , GitHub , LinkedIn , X Daniel Whitenack – Website , GitHub , X Show Notes: Semantic Scholar Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligenc...

Feb 10, 202043 minEp. 76

Insights from the AI Index 2019 Annual Report

Daniel and Chris do a deep dive into The AI Index 2019 Annual Report , which provides unbiased rigorously-vetted data that one can use “to develop intuitions about the complex field of AI”. Analyzing everything from R&D and technical advancements to education, the economy, and societal considerations, Chris and Daniel lay out this comprehensive report’s key insights about artificial intelligence. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – DigitalOcean’s developer cloud makes it simple to launch in the cloud a...

Feb 03, 202045 minEp. 75

Testing ML systems

Production ML systems include more than just the model. In these complicated systems, how do you ensure quality over time, especially when you are constantly updating your infrastructure, data and models? Tania Allard joins us to discuss the ins and outs of testing ML systems. Among other things, she presents a simple formula that helps you score your progress towards a robust system and identify problem areas. Featuring: Tania Allard – Website , GitHub , X Chris Benson – Website , GitHub , Link...

Jan 27, 202048 minEp. 74

AI-driven automation in manufacturing

One of the things people most associate with AI is automation, but how is AI actually shaping automation in manufacturing? Costas Boulis from Bright Machines joins us to talk about how they are using AI in various manufacturing processes and in their “microfactories.” He also discusses the unique challenges of developing AI models based on manufacturing data. Sponsors: Linode – Our cloud server of choice. Deploy a fast, efficient, native SSD cloud server for only $5/month. Get 4 months free usin...

Jan 20, 202047 minEp. 73

How the U.S. military thinks about AI

Chris and Daniel talk with Greg Allen, Chief of Strategy and Communications at the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Joint Artificial Intelligence Center (JAIC). The mission of the JAIC is “to seize upon the transformative potential of artificial intelligence technology for the benefit of America’s national security… The JAIC is the official focal point of the DoD AI Strategy.” So if you want to understand how the U.S. military thinks about artificial intelligence, then this is the episode for yo...

Jan 13, 202049 minEp. 72

2019's AI top 5

Wow, 2019 was an amazing year for AI! In this fully connected episode, Chris and Daniel discuss their list of top 5 notable AI things from 2019. They also discuss the “state of AI” at the end of 2019, and they make some predictions for 2020. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure too easy. Get started for free with a $50 credit. Learn more at do.co/changelog . Bra...

Jan 06, 202058 minEp. 71

AI for search at Etsy

We have all used web and product search technologies for quite some time, but how do they actually work and how is AI impacting search? Andrew Stanton from Etsy joins us to dive into AI-based search methods and to talk about neuroevolution. He also gives us an introduction to Rust for production ML/AI and explains how that community is developing. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managi...

Dec 23, 201946 minEp. 70

Escaping the "dark ages" of AI infrastructure

Evan Sparks, from Determined AI, helps us understand why many are still stuck in the “dark ages” of AI infrastructure. He then discusses how we can build better systems by leveraging things like fault tolerant training and AutoML. Finally, Evan explains his optimistic outlook on AI’s economic and environmental health impact. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure ...

Dec 16, 201950 minEp. 69

Modern NLP with spaCy

SpaCy is awesome for NLP! It’s easy to use, has widespread adoption, is open source, and integrates the latest language models. Ines Montani and Matthew Honnibal (core developers of spaCy and co-founders of Explosion) join us to discuss the history of the project, its capabilities, and the latest trends in NLP. We also dig into the practicalities of taking NLP workflows to production. You don’t want to miss this episode! Featuring: Ines Montani – GitHub , X Matthew Honnibal – GitHub , X Chris Be...

Dec 09, 201956 minEp. 68

Making GANs practical

GANs are at the center of AI hype. However, they are also starting to be extremely practical and be used to develop solutions to real problems. Jakub Langr and Vladimir Bok join us for a deep dive into GANs and their application. We discuss the basics of GANs, their various flavors, and open research problems. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for developers and teams Whether you’re running one virtual machine or ten thousand, makes managing your infrastructure too easy. Get s...

Dec 02, 201959 minEp. 67

Build custom ML tools with Streamlit

Streamlit recently burst onto the scene with their intuitive, open source solution for building custom ML/AI tools. It allows data scientists and ML engineers to rapidly build internal or external UIs without spending time on frontend development. In this episode, Adrien Treuille joins us to discuss ML/AI app development in general and Streamlit. We talk about the practicalities of working with Streamlit along with its seemingly instant adoption by AI2, Stripe, Stitch Fix, Uber, and Twitter. Spo...

Nov 25, 201944 minEp. 66

Intelligent systems and knowledge graphs

There’s a lot of hype about knowledge graphs and AI-methods for building or using them, but what exactly is a knowledge graph? How is it different from a database or other data store? How can I build my own knowledge graph? James Fletcher from Grakn Labs helps us understand knowledge graphs in general and some practical steps towards creating your own. He also discusses graph neural networks and the future of graph-augmented methods. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – The simplest cloud platform for devel...

Nov 18, 201957 minEp. 65

Robot hands solving Rubik's cubes

Everyone is talking about it. OpenAI trained a pair of neural nets that enable a robot hand to solve a Rubik’s cube. That is super dope! The results have also generated a lot of commentary and controversy, mainly related to the way in which the results were represented on OpenAI’s blog. We dig into all of this in on today’s Fully Connected episode, and we point you to a few places where you can learn more about reinforcement learning. Sponsors: DigitalOcean – Check out DigitalOcean’s dedicated v...

Nov 11, 201945 minEp. 64

Open source data labeling tools

What’s the most practical of practical AI things? Data labeling of course! It’s also one of the most time consuming and error prone processes that we deal with in AI development. Michael Malyuk of Heartex and Label Studio joins us to discuss various data labeling challenges and open source tooling to help us overcome those challenges. Sponsors: DigitalOcean Managed Kubernetes – DigitalOcean makes it super simple to launch a Kubernetes cluster in minutes. Developers can now run and scale containe...

Nov 05, 201944 minEp. 63

It's time to talk time series

Times series data is everywhere! I mean, seriously, try to think of some data that isn’t a time series. You have stock prices and weather data, which are the classics, but you also have a time series of images on your phone, time series log data coming off of your servers, and much more. In this episode, Anais from InfluxData helps us understand the range of methods and problems related to time series data. She also gives her perspective on when statistical methods might perform better than neur...

Oct 28, 201943 minEp. 62
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