The Future Stack AI Newsletter #1
Welcome to the first edition of the newsletter that brings Australians the latest developments in AI from all over the world.
⚡New this week
Get to know what’s happening around the world in AI. Learn about groundbreaking technologies, trends in the industry, controversial AI models and researchers, and what to do in order to land your next dream job!
💗Mental Health Check-in
Before you start diving in, take a few seconds to anchor yourself in the moment. At this moment right here, we are witnesses to a groundbreaking era of technology that will bring unprecedented changes to all our lives. Appreciate yourself and open your heart to all the amazing possibilities.
🌍AI in the world
What’s going on with Large Language Models (LLMs)?
Google’s LaMDA was in the news the past few weeks as a software engineer was convinced that the model was sentient. Google used a novel human evaluation metric and rather than perplexity and trained the model on social media conversations.
My take on it? It wasn’t sentient! If you want to know why I can say this confidently, read this paper by Timnit Gebru, the renowned AI ethics researcher. She warns about the risks of misinterpreting the outputs of Large Language Models.
The highly innovative company Hugging Face released an LLM similar to OpenAI’s GPT3. It can interpret 46 languages and 13 programming languages. You must be thinking, “Another language model! Why should we care?” Apart from being an LLM in multiple languages, the coolest part is that it is open-source. Anyone can access it and use it. It’s a huge step toward the democratization of AI, and I am excited!! Why should big tech have all the fun?
🦘AI in Australia
A new CEDA report warns that Australia remains an AI laggard, but is that all bad?
According to a report by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia, most Australian industries and firms are in still in the early stages of implementing AI for their business. Despite the rise in private investment in AI, only 34 percent of companies are using it across operations. But how bad is it, really? To answer this, I have read the report, and here is what I think.
The number “34” hides a lot of details in it. The problem is not just businesses being slow in adopting AI, but that a lot of Australian companies are catching up to global competitors, rather than leading in the field. Right now, if a proper data strategy is not adopted, it would be very difficult to bridge the gap as the data learning effects kick in.
But to start using AI across organisations, two things are very important - establishing proper AI governance practices, and establishing a business case for AI to get senior leadership buy-in. A good way to start is building lean AI, thinking about “why” rather than just the technology, and implementing good data and AI governance practices. A catastrophic mistake is trying to use AI without having data or any idea of the business problem the company is trying to solve.
I personally am very excited to see what Australia does in the AI space!!
📰You can read the full report here and let me know your thoughts in the comments.
Groundbreaking startups in Australia
Let’s look at an Australian Deep Tech Startup that has caught the industry’s attention.
Sydney-based Strong Compute has raised $10.9m and is committed to improving the productivity of deep learning engineers. They do so by dramatically (300x) reducing the time it takes to train neural networks on huge data. If that wasn’t impressive, they have had tech grilling sessions with top deep learning researchers from companies like OpenAI who were blown away by their tech too!
For more, go to their website and see it for yourself. If you want to know a bit more about how they do it, read this.
AI is going to be a $2 trillion industry by 2030, and improving developer productivity is going to be crucial in pushing the curve towards exponential. Go Strong Compute!!
7 Megatrends that will affect your life!!
CSIRO, Australia’s national science agency has identified 7 global megatrends that are key to the challenges and opportunities humans will be dealing with in the next 20 years. The report talks about adapting to climate change, sustainable growth, improving health outcomes for the world, Australian defence and trade strategy, data, AI and digital technologies, and the social drivers for the next 20 years. Read it here and be prepared for a changing world!
🔧Upskilling
If you are a deep learning engineer looking for some advice on upskilling, follow my LinkedIn. If you are starting your deep learning journey, read this post on a course that will be the best point to start. If you are preparing for your dream job, read this post on a great book that helped me land multiple opportunities.
Follow me on LinkedIn here!
In the next edition, read about making your career recession-proof and more!!
Why should you listen to me?
I follow this principle in my life - only take advice from people you don’t mind being in the position of.
I am an ML engineer in Canberra and my most intense obsession is to help companies become competitive by investing in data and AI. Subscribe to my newsletter if you have similar ideas on making a dent in the universe.