55 - Machine Learning with Guillaume Belrose

What can we teach machines? And what can they teach us?

Chantal, Kenneth & Len are joined by Guillaume Belrose to chat broadly about machine learning. Guillaume is currently living in Johannesburg, but hails from the Caribbean. After having studied in France he went onto an internship at HP in Bristol, before moving to Durban and finally up to the city of gold. Guillaume is very involved in the community, being a regular attendee at meetups and having presented at local conferences like Devconf and Tech4Africa.

We had a great time meandering through the field of machine learning, talking about everything from machines learning to play games (and win), to how big companies like Google apply machine learning to their data centers to save millions of dollars in cooling expenses to interesting medical applications.

Guillaume also offered Kenneth some tips for getting started, including some great online courses to follow. He even gave some examples of practical tools that could be built to help us in our day jobs! We also round it out with a mention of how TensorFlow is being used in farming!

Follow Guillaume online:

• https://twitter.com/gbelrose
• https://github.com/kafecho
• http://kafecho.blogspot.co.za/

Some resources mentioned during the show:

• This AI "solves" Super Mario Bros and other NES games - http://arstechnica.com/gaming/2013/04/this-ai-solves-super-mario-bros-and-other-classic-nes-games/
• Deep Reinforcement Learning: Pong from Pixels
• Google uses DeepMind AI to cut data center energy bills - http://www.theverge.com/2016/7/21/12246258/google-deepmind-ai-data-center-cooling
• Tasting the Light: Device Lets the Blind "See" with Their Tongues - http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/device-lets-blind-see-with-tongues/
• TensorFlow - https://www.tensorflow.org/
• Theano - http://deeplearning.net/software/theano/
• Theano - https://deepmind.com/
• Big Data's Mathematical Mysteries - https://www.quantamagazine.org/20151203-big-datas-mathematical-mysteries/
• Machine Learning on Coursera - https://www.coursera.org/learn/machine-learning
• IBM's artificial phase-change neurons - http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/08/ibm-phase-change-neurons/
• Cucumber sorting with TensorFlow - http://qz.com/771921/the-ultimate-promise-of-artificial-intelligence-lies-in-sorting-cucumbers/

Picks

• Guillaume
  • Batman and Ethan
  • Neural Networks and Deep Learning
  • Chasing Cats
• Len
  • Yetibot
• Chantal
  • DESIGN HACKERS
• Kenneth
  • Deep Learning for Java
  • The Man Who Knew Infinity

Thanks for listening!

See all past picks on our picks page.