Online panel discussion on “GANs for Good” with Andrew Ng, Anima Anandkumar, Alexei Efros, Ian Goodfellow, and Sharon Zhou
Sep 30, 2020

The Batch: GAN Special Issue! Ian Goodfellow For Real, Detecting Fakes, Including Minorities, Synthesizing Training Data

This special issue of The Batch celebrates the launch of our new Generative Adversarial Networks Specialization! GANs are among the most exciting technologies to emerge from deep learning. These networks learn in a very different way than typical supervised methods...
Dishwasher robot placing a plate
Sep 23, 2020

The Batch: YouTube vs. Conspiracy Theorists, Robots That Think Ahead, GPU + CPU = The Future, Transformers Retooled

AI researchers keep coming up with impressive innovations: transformer-based language models, self-supervised learning, deep reinforcement learning, small data. All of these developments hold great promise.
Man riding a bike and reading a book at the same time
Sep 16, 2020

The Batch: Training 1 Trillion Parameters, Medical AI Gets a Shot in the Arm, Does Bert Have Common Sense?, Revitalizing Chess

I’d like to share a programming tip that I’ve used for years. A large part of programming involves googling for code snippets you need on Stack Overflow and other websites. (Shh. Don’t tell the nondevelopers. ????)
Hawaiian Pizza
Sep 09, 2020

The Batch: Data for Defense, Predicting Credit Approvals, More Learning From Fewer Labels, Hunting for Planets

Today we take it for granted that many people know how to read and write. Someday, I hope, it will be just as common that people know how to write code. Several hundred years ago, society didn’t view language literacy as a necessary skill.
Light on a window during a very dark night
Sep 02, 2020

The Batch: Autonomous Air Freight, U.S. National AI Centers, Photorealistic Fantasy Tennis, Transformers Transform into RNNs

Did you ever spend days obsessing over a technical problem? If so, I applaud you. Determined pursuit of solutions to hard problems is an important step toward building deep expertise.
Letter and number-shaped stickers on the wall
Aug 26, 2020

The Batch: Students Protest AI-Predicted Exam Scores, Autonomous Fighter Jet Outguns Humans, Computer Vision Sees Race

I’ve been trying to teach my toddler the alphabet. Despite having some educational experience, when she mispronounces a vowel for the nth time, I can’t help but feel like I’m doing it wrong.
Top view of putting hands on each other
Aug 19, 2020

The Batch: Predicting Car Crashes, Profiting From Deepfakes, Piloting Drone Swarms, Grading Data

Last week, I asked what values the AI community stands for. Thank you to everyone who replied! The email responses in aggregate ran to 55 pages of text, and I enjoyed reading all of them.
Andrew Ng's tweet from Aug 2, 2020
Aug 12, 2020

The Batch: Apple's AI Strategy, Retail Surveillance, Clothes That Fight Face Recognition, Suboptimal Optimizers

Earlier this week, I asked a question on social media: What is the most important problem that the AI community should work on? Thousands of you responded. The most frequently mentioned themes included...
Andrew Ng speaking at the National Intergovernmental Audit Forum about auditing AI systems
Aug 05, 2020

The Batch: Faster AI Chips, Smarter Prosthetic Legs, Transformers for Image Processing, Humbling Overconfident Models

I spoke last week at the National Intergovernmental Audit Forum, a meeting attended by U.S. federal, state, and local government auditors. (Apparently some of the organizers had taken AI for Everyone.)
Zoom call with the Ng family celebrating Andrew Ng's grandfather’s 102nd birthday
Jul 29, 2020

The Batch: GPT-3 Gone Wild, Covid Tech Roundup, AI for Sushi, Video Classification on Steroids

Over the weekend, my family celebrated my grandfather’s 102nd birthday on Zoom. We dialed in from Hong Kong (my grandfather), the U.S. (myself), the UK, Singapore, and New Zealand.
Cat sleeping
Jul 22, 2020

The Batch: Corporate Deepfakes, Robot Chemists, Smart Boutiques, Curvy Neural Nets

I received a copy of Why We Sleep: Unlocking the Power of Sleep and Dreams as a Christmas gift — back in the pre-Covid era — and finished it last weekend. This book by Matthew Walker, director of UC Berkeley’s sleep and neuroimaging lab...
People holding a "No student ban, no deportations" sign
Jul 15, 2020

The Batch: Easier Shopping, Smarter Manufacturing, Scarier Monsters, Sharper Headlines

Last week, I wrote about the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) policy that would have forced international students to leave the country if their university went fully online to manage the risk of Covid-19.
Andrew Ng's Certificate of Elegibility for Nonimmigrant (F-1) Student
Jul 08, 2020

The Batch: Biased Datasets, AI for Footballers, Transformers for Object Detection, Photorealistic Faces From History

I am appalled by the policy, announced on Monday by U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), that international students in the country on an F-1 visa must leave if their school goes fully online to cope with Covid-19.
The word "bias" with a forbidden sign over it
Jul 01, 2020

The Batch: Bias in Plain Sight, Apple's New AI, Amazon's Virtual Fitting Room, Bot Besties, Researchers Go Ape

We know that biased data leads to biased machine learning. But does the problem go beyond that? A few colleagues asked about this after a heated exchange on Twitter between Yann LeCun and Timnit Gebru (see “Image Resolution in Black and White” below).
US Notice of Action
Jun 24, 2020

The Batch: Who Still Sells Face Recognition to Police?, AI's Talent Pipeline, Misleading Research, Scaling Models from Serve

I was dismayed on Monday to read that the U.S. is suspending the H1-B visa program at least through the end of the year. This effort to discourage immigration can only bring distress to workers from other countries and harm to the U.S.

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