The TWIML AI Podcast (formerly This Week in Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence)

Today we’re joined by Nicole Nichols, a senior research scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Lab. We discuss her recent presentation at GTC, which was titled “Machine Learning for Security, and Security for Machine Learning.” We explore two use cases, insider threat detection, and software fuzz testing, discussing the effectiveness of standard and bidirectional RNN language models for detecting malicious activity, the augmentation of software fuzzing techniques using deep learning, and much mor

Today we’re joined by Gerald Quon, assistant professor at UC Davis. Gerald presented his work on Deep Domain Adaptation and Generative Models for Single Cell Genomics at GTC this year, which explores single cell genomics as a means of disease identification for treatment. In our conversation, we discuss how he uses deep learning to generate novel insights across diseases, the different types of data that was used, and the development of ‘nested’ Generative Models for single cell measurement.

Today we’re joined by Yashar Hezaveh, Assistant Professor at the University of Montreal. Yashar and I caught up to discuss his work on gravitational lensing, which is the bending of light from distant sources due to the effects of gravity. In our conversation, Yashar and I discuss how ML can be applied to undistort images, the intertwined roles of simulation and ML in generating images, incorporating other techniques such as domain transfer or GANs, and how he assesses the results of this project.

Today we’re joined by Dan Schrider, assistant professor in the department of genetics at UNC Chapel Hill. My discussion with Dan starts with an overview of population genomics, looking into his application of ML in the field. We then dig into Dan’s paper “The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Convolutional Neural Networks in Population Genetic Inference,” which examines the idea that CNNs are capable of outperforming expert-derived statistical methods for some key problems in the field.

Today we’re joined by Rob Walker, Vice President of Decision Management at Pegasystems. Rob joined us back in episode 127 to discuss “Hyperpersonalizing the customer experience.” Today, he’s back for a discussion about the role of empathy in AI systems. In our conversation, we dig into the role empathy plays in consumer-facing human-AI interactions, the differences between empathy and ethics, and a few examples of ways empathy should be considered when enterprise AI systems.

Today we’re joined by Tom Szumowski, Data Scientist at URBN, parent company of Urban Outfitters and other consumer fashion brands. Tom and I caught up to discuss his project “Exploring Custom Vision Services for Automated Fashion Product Attribution.” We look at the process Tom and his team took to build custom attribution models, and the results of their evaluation of various custom vision APIs for this purpose, with a focus on the various roadblocks and lessons he and his team encountered along the

Today we’re joined by Peter Wittek, Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto working on quantum-enhanced machine learning and the application of high-performance learning algorithms. In our conversation, we discuss the current state of quantum computing, a look ahead to what the next 20 years of quantum computing might hold, and how current quantum computers are flawed. We then dive into our discussion on quantum machine learning, and Peter’s new course on the topic, which debuted in Februar

In this special bonus episode of the podcast, I’m joined by Ewin Tang, a PhD student in the Theoretical Computer Science group at the University of Washington. In our conversation, Ewin and I dig into her paper “A quantum-inspired classical algorithm for recommendation systems,” which took the quantum computing community by storm last summer. We haven’t called out a Nerd-Alert interview in a long time, but this interview inspired us to dust off that designation, so get your notepad ready!

Today we're joined by Alfredo Luque, a software engineer on the machine infrastructure team at Airbnb. If you’re interested in AI Platforms and ML infrastructure, you probably remember my interview with Airbnb’s Atul Kale, in which we discussed their Bighead platform. In my conversation with Alfredo, we dig a bit deeper into Bighead’s support for TensorFlow, discuss a recent image categorization challenge they solved with the framework, and explore what the new 2.0 release means for their users.

Today we’re joined by Elena Nieddu, Phd Student at Roma Tre University, who presented on her project “In Codice Ratio” at the TF Dev Summit. In our conversation, Elena provides an overview of the project, which aims to annotate and transcribe Vatican secret archive documents via machine learning. We discuss the many challenges associated with transcribing this vast archive of handwritten documents, including overcoming the high cost of data annotation.

Today we're joined by Paige Bailey, TensorFlow developer advocate at Google, to discuss the TensorFlow 2.0 alpha release. Paige and I talk through the latest TensorFlow updates, including the evolution of the TensorFlow APIs and the role of eager mode, tf.keras and tf.function, the evolution of TensorFlow for Swift and its inclusion in the new fast.ai course, new updates to TFX (or TensorFlow Extended), Google’s end-to-end ML platform, the emphasis on community collaboration with TF 2.0, and more.

Today we’re joined by Andrew Trask, PhD student at the University of Oxford and Leader of the OpenMined Project, an open-source community focused on researching, developing, and promoting tools for secure, privacy-preserving, value-aligned artificial intelligence. We dig into why OpenMined is important, exploring some of the basic research and technologies supporting Private, Decentralized Data Science, including ideas such as Differential Privacy,and Secure Multi-Party Computation.

Today we’re joined by Jos Van Der Westhuizen, PhD student in Engineering at Cambridge University. Jos’ research focuses on applying LSTMs, or Long Short-Term Memory neural networks, to biological data for various tasks. In our conversation, we discuss his paper "The unreasonable effectiveness of the forget gate," in which he explores the various “gates” that make up an LSTM module and the general impact of getting rid of gates on the computational intensity of training the networks.

Today we’re joined by Andrew Guldman, VP of Product Engineering and R&D at Fluid to discuss Fluid XPS, a user experience built to help the casual shopper decide on the best product choices during online retail interactions. We specifically discuss its origins as a product to assist outerwear retailer The North Face. In our conversation, we discuss their use of heat-sink algorithms and graph databases, challenges associated with staying on top of a constantly changing landscape, and more!

Today we’re joined by Kevin Tran, PhD student at Carnegie Mellon University. In our conversation, we explore the challenges surrounding the creation of renewable energy fuel cells, which is discussed in his recent Nature paper “Active learning across intermetallics to guide discovery of electrocatalysts for CO2 reduction and H2 evolution.” The AI Conference is returning to New York in April and we have one FREE conference pass for a lucky listener! Visit twimlai.com/ainygiveaway to enter!