Techfestival 2019, Removing the AI and ML hype
This Friday we went to Copenhagen, actually the Techfestival to run a 2 hour presentation and workshop about machine learning.
Melina started with the history and current state of machine learning, explaining what simple... math equations govern all smart systems today. And it is just that, smart use of math, that is slowly taking over the world. Not replacing humans but removing a new set of tasks from our to-do list so that we can focus on things that humans are good at. Creating new ideas, serve customers and create value.
Johan focused more on the data. Specifically, how to prepare data so that they can be interpreted by machine learning algorithms. How much data do you have of each label, can you produce more data for labels that lack sufficient labelled data. How can you format the data so that it can be used in training and what kind of issues might you run in to with your data. Finally, there are important but often neglected issues with security and privacy, that you need to have in mind.
As the cherry on top, Emil put it all into practice and showed us how, with a few steps it is possible to save several hours a week on customer qualifications. Using statistics to just filter customers would have produced a too narrow list, but by using a random forest he could do a much better job at identifying qualified leads.
The entire session ended in a workshop where the audience got to brainstorm about an application that could plan the perfect weekend for you. With questions like what data it would need, where to get it, how to finance it and how the planned weekend should be presented to the user. After presenting their findings they were divided into two groups where one side had to argue for the application and the other against. I'm not sure exactly where we ended but it provided lot´s of good food for discussion about how these technologies effect our lives and what we should allow them to manage for us and what we should decide our selves.
A great thanks to the audience for the lively discussion and to Techfestival for creating such a insightful festival about the interplay between human and machine.
- Techfestival 2019, Demystify