Hidden Layer — Weekend Learning: Beginners’ Mind For A.I.
Hidden Layer is a weekend update on what’s being processed for future posts. This weekend was dominated by the following content:
Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning.
This post was just the surface. Please feel free to drill down to the links and references for so much more.
Andreesen Horowitz created a very nice resource for A.I.
http://aiplaybook.a16z.com/docs/intro/getting-started
This humorous line from a16z’s A.I. page made me smile: “You might solve your problem with a clean data set and a simpler machine learning algorithm like a good ol’ linear regression.”
A great page about Machine Learning, a “Machine Learning For Humans”, comes from a fantastic engineering duo, Vishal Maini and Samer Sabri
The Big Stack of computer, storage & data -cheaper, faster, broader- has enabled a rate of experimentation, iteration and product and service delivery that would have been unimaginable in the late 1950s, when the earliest academic gatherings took place at institutions like Dartmouth, and seemed like so much science fiction during even the most recent of “AI winters”.
Internet observer veteran Mary Meeker’s report, via Kleiner Perkins, has shared her annual review of tech:
https://www.kpcb.com/internet-trends
https://kpcbweb2.s3.amazonaws.com/files/121/INTERNET_TRENDS_REPORT_2018.pdf?1527701640
A couple of key observations from Meeker this year included the ascension of China in Artificial Intelligence and the rise in interest in quantitative and technical online courses. But it will take more than technical skills to both survive, endure and thrive in the future, given the drop in computing and storage costs.
“It’s the creative people that change the world. What is creativity and how do you achieve it? I look at the people that stand at the intersection of science and art. This is where creativity occurs.”-Walter Isaacson
Isaacson’s biography of Steve Jobs reminded me of a famous anecdote about how Job’s creativity and curiosity led to auditing a class on calligraphy. I wonder what Jobs would have thought about the notion of embedding code inside the font of text?
FontCode New Technique Can Hide Secret Messages Inside Font https://t.co/ZPPKa7iBgz random: potential new venue for branding, “stealth marketing”, public keys hidden in plain sight, ML UX,CPG data,AR tagging,…
— edwardrooster (@edwardrooster) May 28, 2018
The announcement of Alexa ‘s Name-Free Use of Skills is in beta, courtesy of MACHINE-LEARNING. The FLYWHEEL’s never-ending cycle on audio and voice is just spinning up. This comes on the heels of monetizing Alexa Skills. Creators have both incentives and lower discovery friction riding a wave of increasing adoption of Amazon becoming a household platform via Alexa.
Improve Alexa Skill Discovery and Name-Free Use of Your Skill with CanFulfillIntentRequest (Beta) https://t.co/ikzLAOUFse via @alexadevs “When a customer speaks to Alexa without invoking a skill by name, Alexa chooses the best skill to call based on the machine-learning model”
— edwardrooster (@edwardrooster) May 30, 2018
Excited to talk about our new album ‘Hell-On’ with @AmazonMusic! If you have an Echo, #JustAsk “Alexa, enable Today in Music.” Then ask, “what’s the news?” #TodayInMusic
— Neko Case (@NekoCase) June 2, 2018
Imagine if more established writers go exclusive on Amazon’s Audible, to create exclusive audio content. Amazon keeps on disrupting how media is produced and distributed. What will become of both magazines & some podcasts I wonder? Essayists and short-story tellers have a new home.
Want Michael Lewis’s Next Book? You’ll Have to Listen to It https://t.co/1zfsHaPtGd “You’re not going to be able to read it, you’re only going to be able to listen to it,” Mr. Lewis said. “I’ve become Audible’s first magazine writer.” $AMZN #stories #audible
— edwardrooster (@edwardrooster) June 3, 2018
With audio on my mind, music this weekend includes the following selections, which played as I read a16z and the above mentioned sources:
Some closing thoughts about creativity, via Naval Ravikant’s epic thread on May 31 about “How To Get Rich (without being lucky)” and it may be relevant for an economy filled with increasing automation of rote tasks. His thread was about “how to get rich” but I think they should be read by humans worried about their economic survival — as Big Stack’s platforms propel Artificial Intelligence throughout many industries formerly considered “safe”.
From Naval:
“Arm yourself with specific knowledge, accountability, and leverage.
Specific knowledge is knowledge that you cannot be trained for. If society can train you, it can train someone else, and replace you.
Specific knowledge is found by pursuing your genuine curiosity and passion rather than whatever is hot right now.
Building specific knowledge will feel like play to you but will look like work to others.
When specific knowledge is taught, it’s through apprenticeships, not schools.
Specific knowledge is often highly technical or creative. It cannot be outsourced or automated.“
— edwardrooster (@edwardrooster) June 3, 2018
Originally published at big-stack.com on June 3, 2018.
