|
WEBVTT |
|
|
|
00:00.000 --> 00:03.120 |
|
The following is a conversation with Jeremy Howard. |
|
|
|
00:03.120 --> 00:07.080 |
|
He's the founder of Fast AI, a research institute dedicated |
|
|
|
00:07.080 --> 00:09.760 |
|
to making deep learning more accessible. |
|
|
|
00:09.760 --> 00:12.560 |
|
He's also a distinguished research scientist |
|
|
|
00:12.560 --> 00:14.600 |
|
at the University of San Francisco, |
|
|
|
00:14.600 --> 00:17.600 |
|
a former president of Kegel, as well as a top breaking |
|
|
|
00:17.600 --> 00:18.800 |
|
competitor there. |
|
|
|
00:18.800 --> 00:21.680 |
|
And in general, he's a successful entrepreneur, |
|
|
|
00:21.680 --> 00:25.240 |
|
educator, researcher, and an inspiring personality |
|
|
|
00:25.240 --> 00:27.000 |
|
in the AI community. |
|
|
|
00:27.000 --> 00:28.680 |
|
When someone asked me, how do I get |
|
|
|
00:28.680 --> 00:30.240 |
|
started with deep learning? |
|
|
|
00:30.240 --> 00:33.360 |
|
Fast AI is one of the top places I point them to. |
|
|
|
00:33.360 --> 00:34.120 |
|
It's free. |
|
|
|
00:34.120 --> 00:35.520 |
|
It's easy to get started. |
|
|
|
00:35.520 --> 00:37.600 |
|
It's insightful and accessible. |
|
|
|
00:37.600 --> 00:40.960 |
|
And if I may say so, it has very little BS. |
|
|
|
00:40.960 --> 00:44.160 |
|
It can sometimes dilute the value of educational content |
|
|
|
00:44.160 --> 00:46.720 |
|
on popular topics like deep learning. |
|
|
|
00:46.720 --> 00:49.440 |
|
Fast AI has a focus on practical application |
|
|
|
00:49.440 --> 00:51.600 |
|
of deep learning and hands on exploration |
|
|
|
00:51.600 --> 00:53.880 |
|
of the cutting edge that is incredibly |
|
|
|
00:53.880 --> 00:57.960 |
|
both accessible to beginners and useful to experts. |
|
|
|
00:57.960 --> 01:01.360 |
|
This is the Artificial Intelligence Podcast. |
|
|
|
01:01.360 --> 01:03.760 |
|
If you enjoy it, subscribe on YouTube, |
|
|
|
01:03.760 --> 01:06.920 |
|
give it five stars on iTunes, support it on Patreon, |
|
|
|
01:06.920 --> 01:09.040 |
|
or simply connect with me on Twitter. |
|
|
|
01:09.040 --> 01:13.280 |
|
Alex Friedman, spelled F R I D M A N. |
|
|
|
01:13.280 --> 01:18.560 |
|
And now, here's my conversation with Jeremy Howard. |
|
|
|
01:18.560 --> 01:21.680 |
|
What's the first program you ever written? |
|
|
|
01:21.680 --> 01:24.800 |
|
First program I wrote that I remember |
|
|
|
01:24.800 --> 01:29.200 |
|
would be at high school. |
|
|
|
01:29.200 --> 01:31.240 |
|
I did an assignment where I decided |
|
|
|
01:31.240 --> 01:36.240 |
|
to try to find out if there were some better musical scales |
|
|
|
01:36.240 --> 01:40.640 |
|
than the normal 12 tone, 12 interval scale. |
|
|
|
01:40.640 --> 01:43.680 |
|
So I wrote a program on my Commodore 64 in BASIC |
|
|
|
01:43.680 --> 01:46.080 |
|
that searched through other scale sizes |
|
|
|
01:46.080 --> 01:48.440 |
|
to see if it could find one where there |
|
|
|
01:48.440 --> 01:51.880 |
|
were more accurate harmonies. |
|
|
|
01:51.880 --> 01:53.040 |
|
Like mid tone? |
|
|
|
01:53.040 --> 01:56.520 |
|
Like you want an actual exactly 3 to 2 ratio, |
|
|
|
01:56.520 --> 01:59.400 |
|
where else with a 12 interval scale, |
|
|
|
01:59.400 --> 02:01.480 |
|
it's not exactly 3 to 2, for example. |
|
|
|
02:01.480 --> 02:05.080 |
|
So that's well tempered, as they say. |
|
|
|
02:05.080 --> 02:07.680 |
|
And BASIC on a Commodore 64. |
|
|
|
02:07.680 --> 02:09.440 |
|
Where was the interest in music from? |
|
|
|
02:09.440 --> 02:10.480 |
|
Or is it just technical? |
|
|
|
02:10.480 --> 02:14.640 |
|
I did music all my life, so I played saxophone and clarinet |
|
|
|
02:14.640 --> 02:18.120 |
|
and piano and guitar and drums and whatever. |
|
|
|
02:18.120 --> 02:22.200 |
|
How does that thread go through your life? |
|
|
|
02:22.200 --> 02:24.160 |
|
Where's music today? |
|
|
|
02:24.160 --> 02:28.320 |
|
It's not where I wish it was. |
|
|
|
02:28.320 --> 02:30.200 |
|
For various reasons, couldn't really keep it going, |
|
|
|
02:30.200 --> 02:32.560 |
|
particularly because I had a lot of problems with RSI, |
|
|
|
02:32.560 --> 02:33.480 |
|
with my fingers. |
|
|
|
02:33.480 --> 02:37.360 |
|
And so I had to cut back anything that used hands |
|
|
|
02:37.360 --> 02:39.360 |
|
and fingers. |
|
|
|
02:39.360 --> 02:43.920 |
|
I hope one day I'll be able to get back to it health wise. |
|
|
|
02:43.920 --> 02:46.240 |
|
So there's a love for music underlying it all. |
|
|
|
02:46.240 --> 02:47.840 |
|
Sure, yeah. |
|
|
|
02:47.840 --> 02:49.480 |
|
What's your favorite instrument? |
|
|
|
02:49.480 --> 02:50.360 |
|
Saxophone. |
|
|
|
02:50.360 --> 02:51.000 |
|
Sax. |
|
|
|
02:51.000 --> 02:52.840 |
|
Baritone saxophone. |
|
|
|
02:52.840 --> 02:57.440 |
|
Well, probably bass saxophone, but they're awkward. |
|
|
|
02:57.440 --> 03:00.120 |
|
Well, I always love it when music is |
|
|
|
03:00.120 --> 03:01.760 |
|
coupled with programming. |
|
|
|
03:01.760 --> 03:03.800 |
|
There's something about a brain that |
|
|
|
03:03.800 --> 03:07.520 |
|
utilizes those that emerges with creative ideas. |
|
|
|
03:07.520 --> 03:11.200 |
|
So you've used and studied quite a few programming languages. |
|
|
|
03:11.200 --> 03:15.120 |
|
Can you give an overview of what you've used? |
|
|
|
03:15.120 --> 03:17.920 |
|
What are the pros and cons of each? |
|
|
|
03:17.920 --> 03:21.960 |
|
Well, my favorite programming environment almost certainly |
|
|
|
03:21.960 --> 03:26.520 |
|
was Microsoft Access back in the earliest days. |
|
|
|
03:26.520 --> 03:29.080 |
|
So that was a special basic for applications, which |
|
|
|
03:29.080 --> 03:30.720 |
|
is not a good programming language, |
|
|
|
03:30.720 --> 03:33.080 |
|
but the programming environment is fantastic. |
|
|
|
03:33.080 --> 03:40.120 |
|
It's like the ability to create user interfaces and tied data |
|
|
|
03:40.120 --> 03:43.720 |
|
and actions to them and create reports and all that. |
|
|
|
03:43.720 --> 03:46.800 |
|
As I've never seen anything as good. |
|
|
|
03:46.800 --> 03:48.920 |
|
So things nowadays like Airtable, which |
|
|
|
03:48.920 --> 03:56.200 |
|
are like small subsets of that, which people love for good reason. |
|
|
|
03:56.200 --> 04:01.160 |
|
But unfortunately, nobody's ever achieved anything like that. |
|
|
|
04:01.160 --> 04:03.320 |
|
What is that, if you could pause on that for a second? |
|
|
|
04:03.320 --> 04:03.840 |
|
Oh, Access. |
|
|
|
04:03.840 --> 04:04.340 |
|
Access. |
|
|
|
04:04.340 --> 04:06.320 |
|
Is it a fundamental database? |
|
|
|
04:06.320 --> 04:09.600 |
|
It was a database program that Microsoft produced, |
|
|
|
04:09.600 --> 04:13.440 |
|
part of Office, and it kind of withered. |
|
|
|
04:13.440 --> 04:16.320 |
|
But basically, it lets you in a totally graphical way |
|
|
|
04:16.320 --> 04:18.480 |
|
create tables and relationships and queries |
|
|
|
04:18.480 --> 04:24.720 |
|
and tie them to forms and set up event handlers and calculations. |
|
|
|
04:24.720 --> 04:28.680 |
|
And it was a very complete, powerful system designed |
|
|
|
04:28.680 --> 04:35.000 |
|
for not massive scalable things, but for useful little applications |
|
|
|
04:35.000 --> 04:36.400 |
|
that I loved. |
|
|
|
04:36.400 --> 04:40.240 |
|
So what's the connection between Excel and Access? |
|
|
|
04:40.240 --> 04:42.160 |
|
So very close. |
|
|
|
04:42.160 --> 04:47.680 |
|
So Access was the relational database equivalent, |
|
|
|
04:47.680 --> 04:48.360 |
|
if you like. |
|
|
|
04:48.360 --> 04:51.080 |
|
So people still do a lot of that stuff |
|
|
|
04:51.080 --> 04:54.120 |
|
that should be in Access in Excel because they know it. |
|
|
|
04:54.120 --> 04:56.680 |
|
Excel's great as well. |
|
|
|
04:56.680 --> 05:01.760 |
|
But it's just not as rich a programming model as VBA |
|
|
|
05:01.760 --> 05:04.680 |
|
combined with a relational database. |
|
|
|
05:04.680 --> 05:07.320 |
|
And so I've always loved relational databases. |
|
|
|
05:07.320 --> 05:11.080 |
|
But today, programming on top of relational databases |
|
|
|
05:11.080 --> 05:13.840 |
|
is just a lot more of a headache. |
|
|
|
05:13.840 --> 05:16.680 |
|
You generally either need to kind of, |
|
|
|
05:16.680 --> 05:19.040 |
|
you need something that connects, that runs some kind |
|
|
|
05:19.040 --> 05:21.560 |
|
of database server, unless you use SQLite, which |
|
|
|
05:21.560 --> 05:25.000 |
|
has its own issues. |
|
|
|
05:25.000 --> 05:26.320 |
|
Then you kind of often, if you want |
|
|
|
05:26.320 --> 05:27.760 |
|
to get a nice programming model, you |
|
|
|
05:27.760 --> 05:30.440 |
|
need to create an ORM on top. |
|
|
|
05:30.440 --> 05:34.360 |
|
And then, I don't know, there's all these pieces tied together. |
|
|
|
05:34.360 --> 05:37.000 |
|
And it's just a lot more awkward than it should be. |
|
|
|
05:37.000 --> 05:39.200 |
|
There are people that are trying to make it easier, |
|
|
|
05:39.200 --> 05:44.480 |
|
so in particular, I think of Fsharp, Don Syme, who him |
|
|
|
05:44.480 --> 05:49.320 |
|
and his team have done a great job of making something |
|
|
|
05:49.320 --> 05:51.640 |
|
like a database appear in the type system, |
|
|
|
05:51.640 --> 05:54.960 |
|
so you actually get tab completion for fields and tables |
|
|
|
05:54.960 --> 05:57.840 |
|
and stuff like that. |
|
|
|
05:57.840 --> 05:59.280 |
|
Anyway, so that was kind of, anyway, |
|
|
|
05:59.280 --> 06:01.880 |
|
so that whole VBA Office thing, I guess, |
|
|
|
06:01.880 --> 06:04.560 |
|
was a starting point, which is your miss. |
|
|
|
06:04.560 --> 06:07.800 |
|
And I got into Standard Visual Basic, which |
|
|
|
06:07.800 --> 06:09.840 |
|
that's interesting, just to pause on that for a second. |
|
|
|
06:09.840 --> 06:12.600 |
|
And it's interesting that you're connecting programming |
|
|
|
06:12.600 --> 06:18.200 |
|
languages to the ease of management of data. |
|
|
|
06:18.200 --> 06:20.600 |
|
So in your use of programming languages, |
|
|
|
06:20.600 --> 06:24.880 |
|
you always had a love and a connection with data. |
|
|
|
06:24.880 --> 06:28.640 |
|
I've always been interested in doing useful things for myself |
|
|
|
06:28.640 --> 06:31.880 |
|
and for others, which generally means getting some data |
|
|
|
06:31.880 --> 06:34.600 |
|
and doing something with it and putting it out there again. |
|
|
|
06:34.600 --> 06:38.400 |
|
So that's been my interest throughout. |
|
|
|
06:38.400 --> 06:41.560 |
|
So I also did a lot of stuff with Apple script |
|
|
|
06:41.560 --> 06:43.880 |
|
back in the early days. |
|
|
|
06:43.880 --> 06:47.960 |
|
So it's kind of nice being able to get the computer |
|
|
|
06:47.960 --> 06:52.960 |
|
and computers to talk to each other and to do things for you. |
|
|
|
06:52.960 --> 06:56.600 |
|
And then I think that one night, the programming language |
|
|
|
06:56.600 --> 06:59.960 |
|
I most loved then would have been Delphi, which |
|
|
|
06:59.960 --> 07:05.960 |
|
was Object Pascal created by Anders Halsberg, who previously |
|
|
|
07:05.960 --> 07:08.840 |
|
did Turbo Pascal and then went on to create.net |
|
|
|
07:08.840 --> 07:11.080 |
|
and then went on to create TypeScript. |
|
|
|
07:11.080 --> 07:16.720 |
|
Delphi was amazing because it was like a compiled, fast language |
|
|
|
07:16.720 --> 07:20.200 |
|
that was as easy to use as Visual Basic. |
|
|
|
07:20.200 --> 07:27.480 |
|
Delphi, what is it similar to in more modern languages? |
|
|
|
07:27.480 --> 07:28.840 |
|
Visual Basic. |
|
|
|
07:28.840 --> 07:29.680 |
|
Visual Basic. |
|
|
|
07:29.680 --> 07:32.320 |
|
Yeah, that a compiled, fast version. |
|
|
|
07:32.320 --> 07:37.080 |
|
So I'm not sure there's anything quite like it anymore. |
|
|
|
07:37.080 --> 07:42.520 |
|
If you took C Sharp or Java and got rid of the virtual machine |
|
|
|
07:42.520 --> 07:45.040 |
|
and replaced it with something, you could compile a small type |
|
|
|
07:45.040 --> 07:46.520 |
|
binary. |
|
|
|
07:46.520 --> 07:51.680 |
|
I feel like it's where Swift could get to with the new Swift |
|
|
|
07:51.680 --> 07:56.640 |
|
UI and the cross platform development going on. |
|
|
|
07:56.640 --> 08:01.600 |
|
That's one of my dreams is that we'll hopefully get back |
|
|
|
08:01.600 --> 08:02.840 |
|
to where Delphi was. |
|
|
|
08:02.840 --> 08:08.520 |
|
There is actually a free Pascal project nowadays |
|
|
|
08:08.520 --> 08:10.320 |
|
called Lazarus, which is also attempting |
|
|
|
08:10.320 --> 08:13.960 |
|
to recreate Delphi. |
|
|
|
08:13.960 --> 08:16.080 |
|
They're making good progress. |
|
|
|
08:16.080 --> 08:21.000 |
|
So OK, Delphi, that's one of your favorite programming languages? |
|
|
|
08:21.000 --> 08:22.360 |
|
Well, it's programming environments. |
|
|
|
08:22.360 --> 08:26.280 |
|
Again, say Pascal's not a nice language. |
|
|
|
08:26.280 --> 08:27.880 |
|
If you wanted to know specifically |
|
|
|
08:27.880 --> 08:30.360 |
|
about what languages I like, I would definitely |
|
|
|
08:30.360 --> 08:35.480 |
|
pick Jay as being an amazingly wonderful language. |
|
|
|
08:35.480 --> 08:37.000 |
|
What's Jay? |
|
|
|
08:37.000 --> 08:39.600 |
|
Jay, are you aware of APL? |
|
|
|
08:39.600 --> 08:43.520 |
|
I am not, except from doing a little research on the work |
|
|
|
08:43.520 --> 08:44.080 |
|
you've done. |
|
|
|
08:44.080 --> 08:47.280 |
|
OK, so not at all surprising you're not |
|
|
|
08:47.280 --> 08:49.040 |
|
familiar with it because it's not well known, |
|
|
|
08:49.040 --> 08:55.480 |
|
but it's actually one of the main families of programming |
|
|
|
08:55.480 --> 08:57.920 |
|
languages going back to the late 50s, early 60s. |
|
|
|
08:57.920 --> 09:01.720 |
|
So there was a couple of major directions. |
|
|
|
09:01.720 --> 09:04.440 |
|
One was the kind of lambda, calculus, |
|
|
|
09:04.440 --> 09:08.640 |
|
Alonzo church direction, which I guess kind of Lisbon scheme |
|
|
|
09:08.640 --> 09:12.040 |
|
and whatever, which has a history going back |
|
|
|
09:12.040 --> 09:13.440 |
|
to the early days of computing. |
|
|
|
09:13.440 --> 09:17.360 |
|
The second was the kind of imperative slash |
|
|
|
09:17.360 --> 09:23.240 |
|
OO, algo, similar going on to C, C++, so forth. |
|
|
|
09:23.240 --> 09:26.960 |
|
There was a third, which are called array oriented languages, |
|
|
|
09:26.960 --> 09:31.720 |
|
which started with a paper by a guy called Ken Iverson, which |
|
|
|
09:31.720 --> 09:37.480 |
|
was actually a math theory paper, not a programming paper. |
|
|
|
09:37.480 --> 09:41.520 |
|
It was called Notation as a Tool for Thought. |
|
|
|
09:41.520 --> 09:45.320 |
|
And it was the development of a new type of math notation. |
|
|
|
09:45.320 --> 09:48.560 |
|
And the idea is that this math notation was much more |
|
|
|
09:48.560 --> 09:54.480 |
|
flexible, expressive, and also well defined than traditional |
|
|
|
09:54.480 --> 09:56.440 |
|
math notation, which is none of those things. |
|
|
|
09:56.440 --> 09:59.160 |
|
Math notation is awful. |
|
|
|
09:59.160 --> 10:02.840 |
|
And so he actually turned that into a programming language. |
|
|
|
10:02.840 --> 10:06.720 |
|
Because this was the late 50s, all the names were available. |
|
|
|
10:06.720 --> 10:10.520 |
|
So he called his programming language, or APL. |
|
|
|
10:10.520 --> 10:11.160 |
|
APL, what? |
|
|
|
10:11.160 --> 10:15.360 |
|
So APL is a implementation of notation |
|
|
|
10:15.360 --> 10:18.280 |
|
as a tool for thought, by which he means math notation. |
|
|
|
10:18.280 --> 10:22.880 |
|
And Ken and his son went on to do many things, |
|
|
|
10:22.880 --> 10:26.720 |
|
but eventually they actually produced a new language that |
|
|
|
10:26.720 --> 10:28.440 |
|
was built on top of all the learnings of APL. |
|
|
|
10:28.440 --> 10:32.800 |
|
And that was called J. And J is the most |
|
|
|
10:32.800 --> 10:41.040 |
|
expressive, composable, beautifully designed language |
|
|
|
10:41.040 --> 10:42.400 |
|
I've ever seen. |
|
|
|
10:42.400 --> 10:44.520 |
|
Does it have object oriented components? |
|
|
|
10:44.520 --> 10:45.520 |
|
Does it have that kind of thing? |
|
|
|
10:45.520 --> 10:46.240 |
|
Not really. |
|
|
|
10:46.240 --> 10:47.720 |
|
It's an array oriented language. |
|
|
|
10:47.720 --> 10:51.400 |
|
It's the third path. |
|
|
|
10:51.400 --> 10:52.760 |
|
Are you saying array? |
|
|
|
10:52.760 --> 10:53.720 |
|
Array oriented. |
|
|
|
10:53.720 --> 10:54.200 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
10:54.200 --> 10:55.480 |
|
It needs to be array oriented. |
|
|
|
10:55.480 --> 10:57.480 |
|
So array oriented means that you generally |
|
|
|
10:57.480 --> 10:59.520 |
|
don't use any loops. |
|
|
|
10:59.520 --> 11:02.240 |
|
But the whole thing is done with kind |
|
|
|
11:02.240 --> 11:06.360 |
|
of an extreme version of broadcasting, |
|
|
|
11:06.360 --> 11:09.880 |
|
if you're familiar with that NumPy slash Python concept. |
|
|
|
11:09.880 --> 11:14.240 |
|
So you do a lot with one line of code. |
|
|
|
11:14.240 --> 11:17.520 |
|
It looks a lot like math. |
|
|
|
11:17.520 --> 11:20.280 |
|
Notation is basically highly compact. |
|
|
|
11:20.280 --> 11:22.800 |
|
And the idea is that you can kind of, |
|
|
|
11:22.800 --> 11:24.760 |
|
because you can do so much with one line of code, |
|
|
|
11:24.760 --> 11:27.720 |
|
a single screen of code is very unlikely to, |
|
|
|
11:27.720 --> 11:31.080 |
|
you very rarely need more than that to express your program. |
|
|
|
11:31.080 --> 11:33.240 |
|
And so you can kind of keep it all in your head. |
|
|
|
11:33.240 --> 11:36.000 |
|
And you can kind of clearly communicate it. |
|
|
|
11:36.000 --> 11:41.560 |
|
It's interesting that APL created two main branches, K and J. |
|
|
|
11:41.560 --> 11:47.920 |
|
J is this kind of like open source niche community of crazy |
|
|
|
11:47.920 --> 11:49.360 |
|
enthusiasts like me. |
|
|
|
11:49.360 --> 11:52.120 |
|
And then the other path, K, was fascinating. |
|
|
|
11:52.120 --> 11:56.600 |
|
It's an astonishingly expensive programming language, |
|
|
|
11:56.600 --> 12:01.920 |
|
which many of the world's most ludicrously rich hedge funds |
|
|
|
12:01.920 --> 12:02.840 |
|
use. |
|
|
|
12:02.840 --> 12:06.640 |
|
So the entire K machine is so small, |
|
|
|
12:06.640 --> 12:09.320 |
|
it sits inside level three cache on your CPU. |
|
|
|
12:09.320 --> 12:14.040 |
|
And it easily wins every benchmark I've ever seen |
|
|
|
12:14.040 --> 12:16.440 |
|
in terms of data processing speed. |
|
|
|
12:16.440 --> 12:17.840 |
|
But you don't come across it very much, |
|
|
|
12:17.840 --> 12:22.640 |
|
because it's like $100,000 per CPU to run it. |
|
|
|
12:22.640 --> 12:26.240 |
|
But it's like this path of programming languages |
|
|
|
12:26.240 --> 12:29.760 |
|
is just so much, I don't know, so much more powerful |
|
|
|
12:29.760 --> 12:33.840 |
|
in every way than the ones that almost anybody uses every day. |
|
|
|
12:33.840 --> 12:37.400 |
|
So it's all about computation. |
|
|
|
12:37.400 --> 12:38.360 |
|
It's really focusing on it. |
|
|
|
12:38.360 --> 12:40.640 |
|
Pretty heavily focused on computation. |
|
|
|
12:40.640 --> 12:44.320 |
|
I mean, so much of programming is data processing |
|
|
|
12:44.320 --> 12:45.640 |
|
by definition. |
|
|
|
12:45.640 --> 12:49.000 |
|
And so there's a lot of things you can do with it. |
|
|
|
12:49.000 --> 12:51.320 |
|
But yeah, there's not much work being |
|
|
|
12:51.320 --> 12:57.080 |
|
done on making user interface toolkills or whatever. |
|
|
|
12:57.080 --> 12:59.400 |
|
I mean, there's some, but they're not great. |
|
|
|
12:59.400 --> 13:03.160 |
|
At the same time, you've done a lot of stuff with Perl and Python. |
|
|
|
13:03.160 --> 13:08.320 |
|
So what does that fit into the picture of J and K and APL |
|
|
|
13:08.320 --> 13:08.880 |
|
and Python? |
|
|
|
13:08.880 --> 13:12.400 |
|
Well, it's just much more pragmatic. |
|
|
|
13:12.400 --> 13:13.960 |
|
In the end, you kind of have to end up |
|
|
|
13:13.960 --> 13:17.960 |
|
where the libraries are. |
|
|
|
13:17.960 --> 13:21.320 |
|
Because to me, my focus is on productivity. |
|
|
|
13:21.320 --> 13:23.800 |
|
I just want to get stuff done and solve problems. |
|
|
|
13:23.800 --> 13:27.360 |
|
So Perl was great. |
|
|
|
13:27.360 --> 13:29.760 |
|
I created an email company called Fastmail. |
|
|
|
13:29.760 --> 13:35.200 |
|
And Perl was great, because back in the late 90s, early 2000s, |
|
|
|
13:35.200 --> 13:38.160 |
|
it just had a lot of stuff it could do. |
|
|
|
13:38.160 --> 13:41.840 |
|
I still had to write my own monitoring system |
|
|
|
13:41.840 --> 13:43.840 |
|
and my own web framework and my own whatever, |
|
|
|
13:43.840 --> 13:45.760 |
|
because none of that stuff existed. |
|
|
|
13:45.760 --> 13:50.280 |
|
But it was a super flexible language to do that in. |
|
|
|
13:50.280 --> 13:52.720 |
|
And you used Perl for Fastmail. |
|
|
|
13:52.720 --> 13:54.520 |
|
You used it as a back end. |
|
|
|
13:54.520 --> 13:55.800 |
|
So everything was written in Perl? |
|
|
|
13:55.800 --> 13:56.520 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
13:56.520 --> 13:58.720 |
|
Yeah, everything was Perl. |
|
|
|
13:58.720 --> 14:04.480 |
|
Why do you think Perl hasn't succeeded or hasn't dominated |
|
|
|
14:04.480 --> 14:07.120 |
|
the market where Python really takes over a lot of the |
|
|
|
14:07.120 --> 14:08.200 |
|
tests? |
|
|
|
14:08.200 --> 14:09.640 |
|
Well, I mean, Perl did dominate. |
|
|
|
14:09.640 --> 14:13.080 |
|
It was everything, everywhere. |
|
|
|
14:13.080 --> 14:19.920 |
|
But then the guy that ran Perl, Larry Wall, |
|
|
|
14:19.920 --> 14:22.280 |
|
just didn't put the time in anymore. |
|
|
|
14:22.280 --> 14:29.680 |
|
And no project can be successful if there isn't. |
|
|
|
14:29.680 --> 14:32.640 |
|
Particularly one that started with a strong leader that |
|
|
|
14:32.640 --> 14:35.040 |
|
loses that strong leadership. |
|
|
|
14:35.040 --> 14:38.040 |
|
So then Python has kind of replaced it. |
|
|
|
14:38.040 --> 14:45.040 |
|
Python is a lot less elegant language in nearly every way. |
|
|
|
14:45.040 --> 14:48.880 |
|
But it has the data science libraries. |
|
|
|
14:48.880 --> 14:51.240 |
|
And a lot of them are pretty great. |
|
|
|
14:51.240 --> 14:58.280 |
|
So I kind of use it because it's the best we have. |
|
|
|
14:58.280 --> 15:01.800 |
|
But it's definitely not good enough. |
|
|
|
15:01.800 --> 15:04.040 |
|
What do you think the future of programming looks like? |
|
|
|
15:04.040 --> 15:06.880 |
|
What do you hope the future of programming looks like if we |
|
|
|
15:06.880 --> 15:10.200 |
|
zoom in on the computational fields on data science |
|
|
|
15:10.200 --> 15:11.800 |
|
and machine learning? |
|
|
|
15:11.800 --> 15:19.440 |
|
I hope Swift is successful because the goal of Swift, |
|
|
|
15:19.440 --> 15:21.000 |
|
the way Chris Latna describes it, |
|
|
|
15:21.000 --> 15:22.640 |
|
is to be infinitely hackable. |
|
|
|
15:22.640 --> 15:23.480 |
|
And that's what I want. |
|
|
|
15:23.480 --> 15:26.920 |
|
I want something where me and the people I do research with |
|
|
|
15:26.920 --> 15:30.360 |
|
and my students can look at and change everything |
|
|
|
15:30.360 --> 15:32.000 |
|
from top to bottom. |
|
|
|
15:32.000 --> 15:36.240 |
|
There's nothing mysterious and magical and inaccessible. |
|
|
|
15:36.240 --> 15:38.600 |
|
Unfortunately, with Python, it's the opposite of that |
|
|
|
15:38.600 --> 15:42.640 |
|
because Python is so slow, it's extremely unhackable. |
|
|
|
15:42.640 --> 15:44.840 |
|
You get to a point where it's like, OK, from here on down |
|
|
|
15:44.840 --> 15:47.320 |
|
at C. So your debugger doesn't work in the same way. |
|
|
|
15:47.320 --> 15:48.920 |
|
Your profiler doesn't work in the same way. |
|
|
|
15:48.920 --> 15:50.880 |
|
Your build system doesn't work in the same way. |
|
|
|
15:50.880 --> 15:53.760 |
|
It's really not very hackable at all. |
|
|
|
15:53.760 --> 15:55.600 |
|
What's the part you like to be hackable? |
|
|
|
15:55.600 --> 16:00.120 |
|
Is it for the objective of optimizing training |
|
|
|
16:00.120 --> 16:02.600 |
|
of neural networks, inference of neural networks? |
|
|
|
16:02.600 --> 16:04.360 |
|
Is it performance of the system? |
|
|
|
16:04.360 --> 16:08.440 |
|
Or is there some nonperformance related, just creative idea? |
|
|
|
16:08.440 --> 16:09.080 |
|
It's everything. |
|
|
|
16:09.080 --> 16:15.480 |
|
I mean, in the end, I want to be productive as a practitioner. |
|
|
|
16:15.480 --> 16:18.440 |
|
So at the moment, our understanding of deep learning |
|
|
|
16:18.440 --> 16:20.080 |
|
is incredibly primitive. |
|
|
|
16:20.080 --> 16:21.520 |
|
There's very little we understand. |
|
|
|
16:21.520 --> 16:24.200 |
|
Most things don't work very well, even though it works better |
|
|
|
16:24.200 --> 16:26.200 |
|
than anything else out there. |
|
|
|
16:26.200 --> 16:28.760 |
|
There's so many opportunities to make it better. |
|
|
|
16:28.760 --> 16:34.360 |
|
So you look at any domain area like speech recognition |
|
|
|
16:34.360 --> 16:37.720 |
|
with deep learning or natural language processing |
|
|
|
16:37.720 --> 16:39.440 |
|
classification with deep learning or whatever. |
|
|
|
16:39.440 --> 16:41.960 |
|
Every time I look at an area with deep learning, |
|
|
|
16:41.960 --> 16:44.480 |
|
I always see like, oh, it's terrible. |
|
|
|
16:44.480 --> 16:47.560 |
|
There's lots and lots of obviously stupid ways |
|
|
|
16:47.560 --> 16:50.000 |
|
to do things that need to be fixed. |
|
|
|
16:50.000 --> 16:53.320 |
|
So then I want to be able to jump in there and quickly |
|
|
|
16:53.320 --> 16:54.880 |
|
experiment and make them better. |
|
|
|
16:54.880 --> 16:59.320 |
|
Do you think the programming language has a role in that? |
|
|
|
16:59.320 --> 17:00.280 |
|
Huge role, yeah. |
|
|
|
17:00.280 --> 17:07.080 |
|
So currently, Python has a big gap in terms of our ability |
|
|
|
17:07.080 --> 17:11.880 |
|
to innovate particularly around recurrent neural networks |
|
|
|
17:11.880 --> 17:16.840 |
|
and natural language processing because it's so slow. |
|
|
|
17:16.840 --> 17:20.200 |
|
The actual loop where we actually loop through words, |
|
|
|
17:20.200 --> 17:23.760 |
|
we have to do that whole thing in CUDA C. |
|
|
|
17:23.760 --> 17:27.600 |
|
So we actually can't innovate with the kernel, the heart, |
|
|
|
17:27.600 --> 17:31.560 |
|
of that most important algorithm. |
|
|
|
17:31.560 --> 17:33.680 |
|
And it's just a huge problem. |
|
|
|
17:33.680 --> 17:36.600 |
|
And this happens all over the place. |
|
|
|
17:36.600 --> 17:40.080 |
|
So we hit research limitations. |
|
|
|
17:40.080 --> 17:42.840 |
|
Another example, convolutional neural networks, which |
|
|
|
17:42.840 --> 17:46.800 |
|
are actually the most popular architecture for lots of things, |
|
|
|
17:46.800 --> 17:48.920 |
|
maybe most things in deep learning. |
|
|
|
17:48.920 --> 17:50.360 |
|
We almost certainly should be using |
|
|
|
17:50.360 --> 17:54.600 |
|
sparse convolutional neural networks, but only like two |
|
|
|
17:54.600 --> 17:56.800 |
|
people are because to do it, you have |
|
|
|
17:56.800 --> 17:59.920 |
|
to rewrite all of that CUDA C level stuff. |
|
|
|
17:59.920 --> 18:04.520 |
|
And yeah, just research, just in practitioners, don't. |
|
|
|
18:04.520 --> 18:09.240 |
|
So there's just big gaps in what people actually research on, |
|
|
|
18:09.240 --> 18:11.640 |
|
what people actually implement because of the programming |
|
|
|
18:11.640 --> 18:13.240 |
|
language problem. |
|
|
|
18:13.240 --> 18:17.560 |
|
So you think it's just too difficult |
|
|
|
18:17.560 --> 18:23.480 |
|
to write in CUDA C that a higher level programming language |
|
|
|
18:23.480 --> 18:30.520 |
|
like Swift should enable the easier, |
|
|
|
18:30.520 --> 18:33.160 |
|
fooling around, create stuff with RNNs, |
|
|
|
18:33.160 --> 18:34.920 |
|
or sparse convolutional neural networks? |
|
|
|
18:34.920 --> 18:35.920 |
|
Kind of. |
|
|
|
18:35.920 --> 18:38.520 |
|
Who is at fault? |
|
|
|
18:38.520 --> 18:42.320 |
|
Who is at charge of making it easy for a researcher to play around? |
|
|
|
18:42.320 --> 18:43.520 |
|
I mean, no one's at fault. |
|
|
|
18:43.520 --> 18:45.120 |
|
Just nobody's got a round to it yet. |
|
|
|
18:45.120 --> 18:47.080 |
|
Or it's just it's hard. |
|
|
|
18:47.080 --> 18:51.800 |
|
And I mean, part of the fault is that we ignored that whole APL |
|
|
|
18:51.800 --> 18:55.640 |
|
kind of direction, or nearly everybody did for 60 years, |
|
|
|
18:55.640 --> 18:57.720 |
|
50 years. |
|
|
|
18:57.720 --> 18:59.920 |
|
But recently, people have been starting |
|
|
|
18:59.920 --> 19:04.840 |
|
to reinvent pieces of that and kind of create some interesting |
|
|
|
19:04.840 --> 19:07.400 |
|
new directions in the compiler technology. |
|
|
|
19:07.400 --> 19:11.760 |
|
So the place where that's particularly happening right now |
|
|
|
19:11.760 --> 19:14.920 |
|
is something called MLIR, which is something that, again, |
|
|
|
19:14.920 --> 19:18.000 |
|
Chris Lattener, the Swift guy, is leading. |
|
|
|
19:18.000 --> 19:20.080 |
|
And because it's actually not going |
|
|
|
19:20.080 --> 19:22.160 |
|
to be Swift on its own that solves this problem. |
|
|
|
19:22.160 --> 19:24.880 |
|
Because the problem is that currently writing |
|
|
|
19:24.880 --> 19:32.360 |
|
a acceptably fast GPU program is too complicated, |
|
|
|
19:32.360 --> 19:33.680 |
|
regardless of what language you use. |
|
|
|
19:36.480 --> 19:38.680 |
|
And that's just because if you have to deal with the fact |
|
|
|
19:38.680 --> 19:43.160 |
|
that I've got 10,000 threads and I have to synchronize between them |
|
|
|
19:43.160 --> 19:45.360 |
|
all, and I have to put my thing into grid blocks |
|
|
|
19:45.360 --> 19:47.040 |
|
and think about warps and all this stuff, |
|
|
|
19:47.040 --> 19:50.720 |
|
it's just so much boilerplate that to do that well, |
|
|
|
19:50.720 --> 19:52.240 |
|
you have to be a specialist at that. |
|
|
|
19:52.240 --> 19:58.200 |
|
And it's going to be a year's work to optimize that algorithm |
|
|
|
19:58.200 --> 19:59.720 |
|
in that way. |
|
|
|
19:59.720 --> 20:04.640 |
|
But with things like TensorFlow Comprehensions, and Tile, |
|
|
|
20:04.640 --> 20:08.880 |
|
and MLIR, and TVM, there's all these various projects which |
|
|
|
20:08.880 --> 20:11.840 |
|
are all about saying, let's let people |
|
|
|
20:11.840 --> 20:16.080 |
|
create domain specific languages for tensor |
|
|
|
20:16.080 --> 20:16.880 |
|
computations. |
|
|
|
20:16.880 --> 20:19.120 |
|
These are the kinds of things we do generally |
|
|
|
20:19.120 --> 20:21.640 |
|
on the GPU for deep learning, and then |
|
|
|
20:21.640 --> 20:28.280 |
|
have a compiler which can optimize that tensor computation. |
|
|
|
20:28.280 --> 20:31.440 |
|
A lot of this work is actually sitting on top of a project |
|
|
|
20:31.440 --> 20:36.040 |
|
called Halide, which is a mind blowing project |
|
|
|
20:36.040 --> 20:38.880 |
|
where they came up with such a domain specific language. |
|
|
|
20:38.880 --> 20:41.240 |
|
In fact, two, one domain specific language for expressing, |
|
|
|
20:41.240 --> 20:43.840 |
|
this is what my tensor computation is. |
|
|
|
20:43.840 --> 20:46.320 |
|
And another domain specific language for expressing, |
|
|
|
20:46.320 --> 20:50.320 |
|
this is the way I want you to structure |
|
|
|
20:50.320 --> 20:53.040 |
|
the compilation of that, and do it block by block |
|
|
|
20:53.040 --> 20:54.960 |
|
and do these bits in parallel. |
|
|
|
20:54.960 --> 20:57.760 |
|
And they were able to show how you can compress |
|
|
|
20:57.760 --> 21:02.880 |
|
the amount of code by 10x compared to optimized GPU |
|
|
|
21:02.880 --> 21:05.600 |
|
code and get the same performance. |
|
|
|
21:05.600 --> 21:08.480 |
|
So these are the things that are sitting on top |
|
|
|
21:08.480 --> 21:12.240 |
|
of that kind of research, and MLIR |
|
|
|
21:12.240 --> 21:15.160 |
|
is pulling a lot of those best practices together. |
|
|
|
21:15.160 --> 21:17.160 |
|
And now we're starting to see work done |
|
|
|
21:17.160 --> 21:21.400 |
|
on making all of that directly accessible through Swift |
|
|
|
21:21.400 --> 21:25.040 |
|
so that I could use Swift to write those domain specific |
|
|
|
21:25.040 --> 21:25.880 |
|
languages. |
|
|
|
21:25.880 --> 21:29.520 |
|
And hopefully we'll get then Swift CUDA kernels |
|
|
|
21:29.520 --> 21:31.720 |
|
written in a very expressive and concise way that |
|
|
|
21:31.720 --> 21:36.280 |
|
looks a bit like J in APL, and then Swift layers on top |
|
|
|
21:36.280 --> 21:38.360 |
|
of that, and then a Swift UI on top of that, |
|
|
|
21:38.360 --> 21:42.600 |
|
and it'll be so nice if we can get to that point. |
|
|
|
21:42.600 --> 21:48.560 |
|
Now does it all eventually boil down to CUDA and NVIDIA GPUs? |
|
|
|
21:48.560 --> 21:50.120 |
|
Unfortunately at the moment it does, |
|
|
|
21:50.120 --> 21:52.600 |
|
but one of the nice things about MLIR, |
|
|
|
21:52.600 --> 21:56.120 |
|
if AMD ever gets their act together, which they probably |
|
|
|
21:56.120 --> 21:59.040 |
|
want, is that they or others could |
|
|
|
21:59.040 --> 22:05.000 |
|
write MLIR backends for other GPUs |
|
|
|
22:05.000 --> 22:10.320 |
|
or rather tensor computation devices, of which today |
|
|
|
22:10.320 --> 22:15.520 |
|
there are increasing number like Graphcore or Vertex AI |
|
|
|
22:15.520 --> 22:18.840 |
|
or whatever. |
|
|
|
22:18.840 --> 22:22.600 |
|
So yeah, being able to target lots of backends |
|
|
|
22:22.600 --> 22:23.960 |
|
would be another benefit of this, |
|
|
|
22:23.960 --> 22:26.680 |
|
and the market really needs competition, |
|
|
|
22:26.680 --> 22:28.680 |
|
because at the moment NVIDIA is massively |
|
|
|
22:28.680 --> 22:33.640 |
|
overcharging for their kind of enterprise class cards, |
|
|
|
22:33.640 --> 22:36.720 |
|
because there is no serious competition, |
|
|
|
22:36.720 --> 22:39.280 |
|
because nobody else is doing the software properly. |
|
|
|
22:39.280 --> 22:41.400 |
|
In the cloud there is some competition, right? |
|
|
|
22:41.400 --> 22:45.080 |
|
But not really, other than TPUs perhaps, |
|
|
|
22:45.080 --> 22:49.040 |
|
but TPUs are almost unprogrammable at the moment. |
|
|
|
22:49.040 --> 22:51.080 |
|
TPUs have the same problem that you can't. |
|
|
|
22:51.080 --> 22:51.760 |
|
It's even worse. |
|
|
|
22:51.760 --> 22:54.800 |
|
So TPUs, Google actually made an explicit decision |
|
|
|
22:54.800 --> 22:57.200 |
|
to make them almost entirely unprogrammable, |
|
|
|
22:57.200 --> 22:59.960 |
|
because they felt that there was too much IP in there, |
|
|
|
22:59.960 --> 23:02.640 |
|
and if they gave people direct access to program them, |
|
|
|
23:02.640 --> 23:04.360 |
|
people would learn their secrets. |
|
|
|
23:04.360 --> 23:09.720 |
|
So you can't actually directly program |
|
|
|
23:09.720 --> 23:12.120 |
|
the memory in a TPU. |
|
|
|
23:12.120 --> 23:16.360 |
|
You can't even directly create code that runs on |
|
|
|
23:16.360 --> 23:19.080 |
|
and that you look at on the machine that has the TPU. |
|
|
|
23:19.080 --> 23:20.920 |
|
It all goes through a virtual machine. |
|
|
|
23:20.920 --> 23:23.680 |
|
So all you can really do is this kind of cookie cutter |
|
|
|
23:23.680 --> 23:27.760 |
|
thing of like plug in high level stuff together, |
|
|
|
23:27.760 --> 23:31.440 |
|
which is just super tedious and annoying |
|
|
|
23:31.440 --> 23:33.920 |
|
and totally unnecessary. |
|
|
|
23:33.920 --> 23:40.960 |
|
So tell me if you could, the origin story of fast AI. |
|
|
|
23:40.960 --> 23:45.760 |
|
What is the motivation, its mission, its dream? |
|
|
|
23:45.760 --> 23:50.040 |
|
So I guess the founding story is heavily |
|
|
|
23:50.040 --> 23:51.840 |
|
tied to my previous startup, which |
|
|
|
23:51.840 --> 23:53.960 |
|
is a company called Inletic, which |
|
|
|
23:53.960 --> 23:58.280 |
|
was the first company to focus on deep learning for medicine. |
|
|
|
23:58.280 --> 24:03.240 |
|
And I created that because I saw there was a huge opportunity |
|
|
|
24:03.240 --> 24:07.960 |
|
to, there's about a 10x shortage of the number of doctors |
|
|
|
24:07.960 --> 24:12.120 |
|
in the world and the developing world that we need. |
|
|
|
24:12.120 --> 24:13.840 |
|
I expected it would take about 300 years |
|
|
|
24:13.840 --> 24:16.120 |
|
to train enough doctors to meet that gap. |
|
|
|
24:16.120 --> 24:20.760 |
|
But I guessed that maybe if we used |
|
|
|
24:20.760 --> 24:23.760 |
|
deep learning for some of the analytics, |
|
|
|
24:23.760 --> 24:25.760 |
|
we could maybe make it so you don't need |
|
|
|
24:25.760 --> 24:27.320 |
|
as highly trained doctors. |
|
|
|
24:27.320 --> 24:28.320 |
|
For diagnosis? |
|
|
|
24:28.320 --> 24:29.840 |
|
For diagnosis and treatment planning. |
|
|
|
24:29.840 --> 24:33.440 |
|
Where's the biggest benefit just before get the fast AI? |
|
|
|
24:33.440 --> 24:37.280 |
|
Where's the biggest benefit of AI and medicine that you see |
|
|
|
24:37.280 --> 24:39.440 |
|
today and in the future? |
|
|
|
24:39.440 --> 24:41.960 |
|
Not much happening today in terms of stuff that's actually |
|
|
|
24:41.960 --> 24:42.440 |
|
out there. |
|
|
|
24:42.440 --> 24:43.160 |
|
It's very early. |
|
|
|
24:43.160 --> 24:45.320 |
|
But in terms of the opportunity, it's |
|
|
|
24:45.320 --> 24:51.080 |
|
to take markets like India and China and Indonesia, which |
|
|
|
24:51.080 --> 24:58.120 |
|
have big populations, Africa, small numbers of doctors, |
|
|
|
24:58.120 --> 25:02.440 |
|
and provide diagnostic, particularly treatment |
|
|
|
25:02.440 --> 25:05.160 |
|
planning and triage kind of on device |
|
|
|
25:05.160 --> 25:10.360 |
|
so that if you do a test for malaria or tuberculosis |
|
|
|
25:10.360 --> 25:12.800 |
|
or whatever, you immediately get something |
|
|
|
25:12.800 --> 25:14.840 |
|
that even a health care worker that's |
|
|
|
25:14.840 --> 25:20.360 |
|
had a month of training can get a very high quality |
|
|
|
25:20.360 --> 25:23.480 |
|
assessment of whether the patient might be at risk |
|
|
|
25:23.480 --> 25:27.480 |
|
until OK, we'll send them off to a hospital. |
|
|
|
25:27.480 --> 25:31.720 |
|
So for example, in Africa, outside of South Africa, |
|
|
|
25:31.720 --> 25:34.080 |
|
there's only five pediatric radiologists |
|
|
|
25:34.080 --> 25:35.320 |
|
for the entire continent. |
|
|
|
25:35.320 --> 25:37.200 |
|
So most countries don't have any. |
|
|
|
25:37.200 --> 25:39.240 |
|
So if your kid is sick and they need something |
|
|
|
25:39.240 --> 25:41.200 |
|
diagnosed through medical imaging, |
|
|
|
25:41.200 --> 25:44.040 |
|
the person, even if you're able to get medical imaging done, |
|
|
|
25:44.040 --> 25:48.920 |
|
the person that looks at it will be a nurse at best. |
|
|
|
25:48.920 --> 25:52.480 |
|
But actually, in India, for example, and China, |
|
|
|
25:52.480 --> 25:54.760 |
|
almost no x rays are read by anybody, |
|
|
|
25:54.760 --> 25:59.400 |
|
by any trained professional, because they don't have enough. |
|
|
|
25:59.400 --> 26:02.880 |
|
So if instead we had an algorithm that |
|
|
|
26:02.880 --> 26:10.080 |
|
could take the most likely high risk 5% and say triage, |
|
|
|
26:10.080 --> 26:13.280 |
|
basically say, OK, somebody needs to look at this, |
|
|
|
26:13.280 --> 26:16.240 |
|
it would massively change the kind of way |
|
|
|
26:16.240 --> 26:20.640 |
|
that what's possible with medicine in the developing world. |
|
|
|
26:20.640 --> 26:23.680 |
|
And remember, increasingly, they have money. |
|
|
|
26:23.680 --> 26:24.800 |
|
They're the developing world. |
|
|
|
26:24.800 --> 26:26.160 |
|
They're not the poor world, the developing world. |
|
|
|
26:26.160 --> 26:26.920 |
|
So they have the money. |
|
|
|
26:26.920 --> 26:28.480 |
|
So they're building the hospitals. |
|
|
|
26:28.480 --> 26:31.960 |
|
They're getting the diagnostic equipment. |
|
|
|
26:31.960 --> 26:34.880 |
|
But there's no way for a very long time |
|
|
|
26:34.880 --> 26:38.480 |
|
will they be able to have the expertise. |
|
|
|
26:38.480 --> 26:39.760 |
|
Shortage of expertise. |
|
|
|
26:39.760 --> 26:42.720 |
|
OK, and that's where the deep learning systems |
|
|
|
26:42.720 --> 26:46.040 |
|
can step in and magnify the expertise they do have. |
|
|
|
26:46.040 --> 26:47.840 |
|
Exactly. |
|
|
|
26:47.840 --> 26:54.160 |
|
So you do see, just to linger a little bit longer, |
|
|
|
26:54.160 --> 26:58.520 |
|
the interaction, do you still see the human experts still |
|
|
|
26:58.520 --> 26:59.840 |
|
at the core of the system? |
|
|
|
26:59.840 --> 27:00.480 |
|
Yeah, absolutely. |
|
|
|
27:00.480 --> 27:01.720 |
|
Is there something in medicine that |
|
|
|
27:01.720 --> 27:03.760 |
|
could be automated almost completely? |
|
|
|
27:03.760 --> 27:06.360 |
|
I don't see the point of even thinking about that, |
|
|
|
27:06.360 --> 27:08.480 |
|
because we have such a shortage of people. |
|
|
|
27:08.480 --> 27:12.160 |
|
Why would we want to find a way not to use them? |
|
|
|
27:12.160 --> 27:13.840 |
|
Like, we have people. |
|
|
|
27:13.840 --> 27:17.200 |
|
So the idea of, even from an economic point of view, |
|
|
|
27:17.200 --> 27:19.800 |
|
if you can make them 10x more productive, |
|
|
|
27:19.800 --> 27:21.600 |
|
getting rid of the person doesn't |
|
|
|
27:21.600 --> 27:23.880 |
|
impact your unit economics at all. |
|
|
|
27:23.880 --> 27:26.680 |
|
And it totally involves the fact that there are things |
|
|
|
27:26.680 --> 27:28.760 |
|
people do better than machines. |
|
|
|
27:28.760 --> 27:33.120 |
|
So it's just, to me, that's not a useful way |
|
|
|
27:33.120 --> 27:34.120 |
|
of framing the problem. |
|
|
|
27:34.120 --> 27:36.440 |
|
I guess, just to clarify, I guess I |
|
|
|
27:36.440 --> 27:40.560 |
|
meant there may be some problems where you can avoid even |
|
|
|
27:40.560 --> 27:42.160 |
|
going to the expert ever. |
|
|
|
27:42.160 --> 27:46.160 |
|
Sort of maybe preventative care or some basic stuff, |
|
|
|
27:46.160 --> 27:47.800 |
|
the low hanging fruit, allowing the expert |
|
|
|
27:47.800 --> 27:51.320 |
|
to focus on the things that are really that. |
|
|
|
27:51.320 --> 27:52.960 |
|
Well, that's what the triage would do, right? |
|
|
|
27:52.960 --> 28:00.760 |
|
So the triage would say, OK, 99% sure there's nothing here. |
|
|
|
28:00.760 --> 28:04.040 |
|
So that can be done on device. |
|
|
|
28:04.040 --> 28:05.920 |
|
And they can just say, OK, go home. |
|
|
|
28:05.920 --> 28:10.520 |
|
So the experts are being used to look at the stuff which |
|
|
|
28:10.520 --> 28:12.240 |
|
has some chance it's worth looking at, |
|
|
|
28:12.240 --> 28:15.720 |
|
which most things is not. |
|
|
|
28:15.720 --> 28:16.280 |
|
It's fine. |
|
|
|
28:16.280 --> 28:19.840 |
|
Why do you think we haven't quite made progress on that yet |
|
|
|
28:19.840 --> 28:27.480 |
|
in terms of the scale of how much AI is applied in the method? |
|
|
|
28:27.480 --> 28:28.400 |
|
There's a lot of reasons. |
|
|
|
28:28.400 --> 28:29.640 |
|
I mean, one is it's pretty new. |
|
|
|
28:29.640 --> 28:32.040 |
|
I only started in late 2014. |
|
|
|
28:32.040 --> 28:35.920 |
|
And before that, it's hard to express |
|
|
|
28:35.920 --> 28:37.760 |
|
to what degree the medical world was not |
|
|
|
28:37.760 --> 28:40.720 |
|
aware of the opportunities here. |
|
|
|
28:40.720 --> 28:45.520 |
|
So I went to RSNA, which is the world's largest radiology |
|
|
|
28:45.520 --> 28:46.240 |
|
conference. |
|
|
|
28:46.240 --> 28:50.040 |
|
And I told everybody I could, like, |
|
|
|
28:50.040 --> 28:51.800 |
|
I'm doing this thing with deep learning. |
|
|
|
28:51.800 --> 28:53.320 |
|
Please come and check it out. |
|
|
|
28:53.320 --> 28:56.880 |
|
And no one had any idea what I was talking about. |
|
|
|
28:56.880 --> 28:59.640 |
|
No one had any interest in it. |
|
|
|
28:59.640 --> 29:05.040 |
|
So we've come from absolute zero, which is hard. |
|
|
|
29:05.040 --> 29:09.920 |
|
And then the whole regulatory framework, education system, |
|
|
|
29:09.920 --> 29:13.400 |
|
everything is just set up to think of doctoring |
|
|
|
29:13.400 --> 29:14.920 |
|
in a very different way. |
|
|
|
29:14.920 --> 29:16.400 |
|
So today, there is a small number |
|
|
|
29:16.400 --> 29:22.040 |
|
of people who are deep learning practitioners and doctors |
|
|
|
29:22.040 --> 29:22.960 |
|
at the same time. |
|
|
|
29:22.960 --> 29:25.040 |
|
And we're starting to see the first ones come out |
|
|
|
29:25.040 --> 29:26.520 |
|
of their PhD programs. |
|
|
|
29:26.520 --> 29:33.960 |
|
So Zach Cahane over in Boston, Cambridge |
|
|
|
29:33.960 --> 29:41.040 |
|
has a number of students now who are data science experts, |
|
|
|
29:41.040 --> 29:46.400 |
|
deep learning experts, and actual medical doctors. |
|
|
|
29:46.400 --> 29:49.480 |
|
Quite a few doctors have completed our fast AI course |
|
|
|
29:49.480 --> 29:54.920 |
|
now and are publishing papers and creating journal reading |
|
|
|
29:54.920 --> 29:58.040 |
|
groups in the American Council of Radiology. |
|
|
|
29:58.040 --> 30:00.280 |
|
And it's just starting to happen. |
|
|
|
30:00.280 --> 30:02.840 |
|
But it's going to be a long process. |
|
|
|
30:02.840 --> 30:04.920 |
|
The regulators have to learn how to regulate this. |
|
|
|
30:04.920 --> 30:08.720 |
|
They have to build guidelines. |
|
|
|
30:08.720 --> 30:12.120 |
|
And then the lawyers at hospitals |
|
|
|
30:12.120 --> 30:15.080 |
|
have to develop a new way of understanding |
|
|
|
30:15.080 --> 30:18.680 |
|
that sometimes it makes sense for data |
|
|
|
30:18.680 --> 30:24.880 |
|
to be looked at in raw form in large quantities |
|
|
|
30:24.880 --> 30:27.000 |
|
in order to create world changing results. |
|
|
|
30:27.000 --> 30:30.080 |
|
Yeah, there's a regulation around data, all that. |
|
|
|
30:30.080 --> 30:33.840 |
|
It sounds probably the hardest problem, |
|
|
|
30:33.840 --> 30:36.760 |
|
but it sounds reminiscent of autonomous vehicles as well. |
|
|
|
30:36.760 --> 30:38.760 |
|
Many of the same regulatory challenges, |
|
|
|
30:38.760 --> 30:40.560 |
|
many of the same data challenges. |
|
|
|
30:40.560 --> 30:42.160 |
|
Yeah, I mean, funnily enough, the problem |
|
|
|
30:42.160 --> 30:44.880 |
|
is less the regulation and more the interpretation |
|
|
|
30:44.880 --> 30:48.200 |
|
of that regulation by lawyers in hospitals. |
|
|
|
30:48.200 --> 30:52.560 |
|
So HIPAA was actually designed. |
|
|
|
30:52.560 --> 30:56.400 |
|
The P in HIPAA does not stand for privacy. |
|
|
|
30:56.400 --> 30:57.640 |
|
It stands for portability. |
|
|
|
30:57.640 --> 31:01.200 |
|
It's actually meant to be a way that data can be used. |
|
|
|
31:01.200 --> 31:04.400 |
|
And it was created with lots of gray areas |
|
|
|
31:04.400 --> 31:06.560 |
|
because the idea is that would be more practical |
|
|
|
31:06.560 --> 31:10.480 |
|
and it would help people to use this legislation |
|
|
|
31:10.480 --> 31:13.680 |
|
to actually share data in a more thoughtful way. |
|
|
|
31:13.680 --> 31:15.320 |
|
Unfortunately, it's done the opposite |
|
|
|
31:15.320 --> 31:18.880 |
|
because when a lawyer sees a gray area, they see, oh, |
|
|
|
31:18.880 --> 31:22.440 |
|
if we don't know we won't get sued, then we can't do it. |
|
|
|
31:22.440 --> 31:26.360 |
|
So HIPAA is not exactly the problem. |
|
|
|
31:26.360 --> 31:30.080 |
|
The problem is more that hospital lawyers |
|
|
|
31:30.080 --> 31:34.720 |
|
are not incented to make bold decisions |
|
|
|
31:34.720 --> 31:36.520 |
|
about data portability. |
|
|
|
31:36.520 --> 31:40.480 |
|
Or even to embrace technology that saves lives. |
|
|
|
31:40.480 --> 31:42.440 |
|
They more want to not get in trouble |
|
|
|
31:42.440 --> 31:44.280 |
|
for embracing that technology. |
|
|
|
31:44.280 --> 31:47.840 |
|
Also, it is also saves lives in a very abstract way, |
|
|
|
31:47.840 --> 31:49.840 |
|
which is like, oh, we've been able to release |
|
|
|
31:49.840 --> 31:52.360 |
|
these 100,000 anonymous records. |
|
|
|
31:52.360 --> 31:55.360 |
|
I can't point at the specific person whose life that's saved. |
|
|
|
31:55.360 --> 31:57.760 |
|
I can say like, oh, we've ended up with this paper |
|
|
|
31:57.760 --> 32:02.200 |
|
which found this result, which diagnosed 1,000 more people |
|
|
|
32:02.200 --> 32:04.200 |
|
than we would have otherwise, but it's like, |
|
|
|
32:04.200 --> 32:07.360 |
|
which ones were helped, it's very abstract. |
|
|
|
32:07.360 --> 32:09.400 |
|
Yeah, and on the counter side of that, |
|
|
|
32:09.400 --> 32:13.080 |
|
you may be able to point to a life that was taken |
|
|
|
32:13.080 --> 32:14.360 |
|
because of something that was... |
|
|
|
32:14.360 --> 32:18.240 |
|
Yeah, or a person whose privacy was violated. |
|
|
|
32:18.240 --> 32:20.360 |
|
It's like, oh, this specific person, |
|
|
|
32:20.360 --> 32:25.480 |
|
you know, there was deidentified. |
|
|
|
32:25.480 --> 32:27.360 |
|
Just a fascinating topic. |
|
|
|
32:27.360 --> 32:28.360 |
|
We're jumping around. |
|
|
|
32:28.360 --> 32:32.880 |
|
We'll get back to fast AI, but on the question of privacy, |
|
|
|
32:32.880 --> 32:38.160 |
|
data is the fuel for so much innovation in deep learning. |
|
|
|
32:38.160 --> 32:39.840 |
|
What's your sense on privacy, |
|
|
|
32:39.840 --> 32:44.080 |
|
whether we're talking about Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, |
|
|
|
32:44.080 --> 32:48.720 |
|
just the technologies like in the medical field |
|
|
|
32:48.720 --> 32:53.440 |
|
that rely on people's data in order to create impact? |
|
|
|
32:53.440 --> 32:58.840 |
|
How do we get that right, respecting people's privacy |
|
|
|
32:58.840 --> 33:03.360 |
|
and yet creating technology that is learned from data? |
|
|
|
33:03.360 --> 33:11.480 |
|
One of my areas of focus is on doing more with less data, |
|
|
|
33:11.480 --> 33:15.000 |
|
which so most vendors, unfortunately, are strongly |
|
|
|
33:15.000 --> 33:20.000 |
|
centred to find ways to require more data and more computation. |
|
|
|
33:20.000 --> 33:24.000 |
|
So Google and IBM being the most obvious... |
|
|
|
33:24.000 --> 33:26.000 |
|
IBM. |
|
|
|
33:26.000 --> 33:30.600 |
|
Yeah, so Watson, you know, so Google and IBM both strongly push |
|
|
|
33:30.600 --> 33:35.400 |
|
the idea that they have more data and more computation |
|
|
|
33:35.400 --> 33:37.800 |
|
and more intelligent people than anybody else, |
|
|
|
33:37.800 --> 33:39.840 |
|
and so you have to trust them to do things |
|
|
|
33:39.840 --> 33:42.600 |
|
because nobody else can do it. |
|
|
|
33:42.600 --> 33:45.360 |
|
And Google's very upfront about this, |
|
|
|
33:45.360 --> 33:48.680 |
|
like Jeff Dain has gone out there and given talks and said, |
|
|
|
33:48.680 --> 33:52.840 |
|
our goal is to require 1,000 times more computation, |
|
|
|
33:52.840 --> 33:55.120 |
|
but less people. |
|
|
|
33:55.120 --> 34:00.600 |
|
Our goal is to use the people that you have better |
|
|
|
34:00.600 --> 34:02.960 |
|
and the data you have better and the computation you have better. |
|
|
|
34:02.960 --> 34:06.000 |
|
So one of the things that we've discovered is, |
|
|
|
34:06.000 --> 34:11.080 |
|
or at least highlighted, is that you very, very, very often |
|
|
|
34:11.080 --> 34:13.360 |
|
don't need much data at all. |
|
|
|
34:13.360 --> 34:16.160 |
|
And so the data you already have in your organization |
|
|
|
34:16.160 --> 34:19.240 |
|
will be enough to get state of the art results. |
|
|
|
34:19.240 --> 34:22.600 |
|
So like my starting point would be to kind of say around privacy |
|
|
|
34:22.600 --> 34:25.760 |
|
is a lot of people are looking for ways |
|
|
|
34:25.760 --> 34:28.120 |
|
to share data and aggregate data, |
|
|
|
34:28.120 --> 34:29.920 |
|
but I think often that's unnecessary. |
|
|
|
34:29.920 --> 34:32.160 |
|
They assume that they need more data than they do |
|
|
|
34:32.160 --> 34:35.240 |
|
because they're not familiar with the basics of transfer |
|
|
|
34:35.240 --> 34:38.440 |
|
learning, which is this critical technique |
|
|
|
34:38.440 --> 34:42.000 |
|
for needing orders of magnitude less data. |
|
|
|
34:42.000 --> 34:44.680 |
|
Is your sense, one reason you might want to collect data |
|
|
|
34:44.680 --> 34:50.440 |
|
from everyone is like in the recommender system context, |
|
|
|
34:50.440 --> 34:54.520 |
|
where your individual, Jeremy Howard's individual data |
|
|
|
34:54.520 --> 34:58.600 |
|
is the most useful for providing a product that's |
|
|
|
34:58.600 --> 34:59.880 |
|
impactful for you. |
|
|
|
34:59.880 --> 35:02.240 |
|
So for giving you advertisements, |
|
|
|
35:02.240 --> 35:07.640 |
|
for recommending to you movies, for doing medical diagnosis. |
|
|
|
35:07.640 --> 35:11.720 |
|
Is your sense we can build with a small amount of data, |
|
|
|
35:11.720 --> 35:16.040 |
|
general models that will have a huge impact for most people, |
|
|
|
35:16.040 --> 35:19.120 |
|
that we don't need to have data from each individual? |
|
|
|
35:19.120 --> 35:20.560 |
|
On the whole, I'd say yes. |
|
|
|
35:20.560 --> 35:26.400 |
|
I mean, there are things like, recommender systems |
|
|
|
35:26.400 --> 35:30.960 |
|
have this cold start problem, where Jeremy is a new customer. |
|
|
|
35:30.960 --> 35:33.280 |
|
We haven't seen him before, so we can't recommend him things |
|
|
|
35:33.280 --> 35:36.520 |
|
based on what else he's bought and liked with us. |
|
|
|
35:36.520 --> 35:39.440 |
|
And there's various workarounds to that. |
|
|
|
35:39.440 --> 35:41.160 |
|
A lot of music programs will start out |
|
|
|
35:41.160 --> 35:44.920 |
|
by saying, which of these artists do you like? |
|
|
|
35:44.920 --> 35:46.800 |
|
Which of these albums do you like? |
|
|
|
35:46.800 --> 35:49.800 |
|
Which of these songs do you like? |
|
|
|
35:49.800 --> 35:51.040 |
|
Netflix used to do that. |
|
|
|
35:51.040 --> 35:55.320 |
|
Nowadays, people don't like that because they think, oh, |
|
|
|
35:55.320 --> 35:57.400 |
|
we don't want to bother the user. |
|
|
|
35:57.400 --> 36:00.560 |
|
So you could work around that by having some kind of data |
|
|
|
36:00.560 --> 36:04.240 |
|
sharing where you get my marketing record from Axiom |
|
|
|
36:04.240 --> 36:06.360 |
|
or whatever and try to question that. |
|
|
|
36:06.360 --> 36:12.360 |
|
To me, the benefit to me and to society |
|
|
|
36:12.360 --> 36:16.520 |
|
of saving me five minutes on answering some questions |
|
|
|
36:16.520 --> 36:23.520 |
|
versus the negative externalities of the privacy issue |
|
|
|
36:23.520 --> 36:24.800 |
|
doesn't add up. |
|
|
|
36:24.800 --> 36:26.600 |
|
So I think a lot of the time, the places |
|
|
|
36:26.600 --> 36:30.520 |
|
where people are invading our privacy in order |
|
|
|
36:30.520 --> 36:35.360 |
|
to provide convenience is really about just trying |
|
|
|
36:35.360 --> 36:36.880 |
|
to make them more money. |
|
|
|
36:36.880 --> 36:40.760 |
|
And they move these negative externalities |
|
|
|
36:40.760 --> 36:44.360 |
|
into places that they don't have to pay for them. |
|
|
|
36:44.360 --> 36:48.120 |
|
So when you actually see regulations |
|
|
|
36:48.120 --> 36:50.560 |
|
appear that actually cause the companies that |
|
|
|
36:50.560 --> 36:52.360 |
|
create these negative externalities to have |
|
|
|
36:52.360 --> 36:54.320 |
|
to pay for it themselves, they say, well, |
|
|
|
36:54.320 --> 36:56.160 |
|
we can't do it anymore. |
|
|
|
36:56.160 --> 36:58.240 |
|
So the cost is actually too high. |
|
|
|
36:58.240 --> 37:02.280 |
|
But for something like medicine, the hospital |
|
|
|
37:02.280 --> 37:06.440 |
|
has my medical imaging, my pathology studies, |
|
|
|
37:06.440 --> 37:08.920 |
|
my medical records. |
|
|
|
37:08.920 --> 37:11.920 |
|
And also, I own my medical data. |
|
|
|
37:11.920 --> 37:16.960 |
|
So I help a startup called DocAI. |
|
|
|
37:16.960 --> 37:19.760 |
|
One of the things DocAI does is that it has an app. |
|
|
|
37:19.760 --> 37:26.120 |
|
You can connect to Sutter Health and Labcore and Walgreens |
|
|
|
37:26.120 --> 37:29.840 |
|
and download your medical data to your phone |
|
|
|
37:29.840 --> 37:33.560 |
|
and then upload it, again, at your discretion |
|
|
|
37:33.560 --> 37:36.040 |
|
to share it as you wish. |
|
|
|
37:36.040 --> 37:38.440 |
|
So with that kind of approach, we |
|
|
|
37:38.440 --> 37:41.160 |
|
can share our medical information |
|
|
|
37:41.160 --> 37:44.840 |
|
with the people we want to. |
|
|
|
37:44.840 --> 37:45.720 |
|
Yeah, so control. |
|
|
|
37:45.720 --> 37:48.240 |
|
I mean, really being able to control who you share it with |
|
|
|
37:48.240 --> 37:49.760 |
|
and so on. |
|
|
|
37:49.760 --> 37:53.080 |
|
So that has a beautiful, interesting tangent |
|
|
|
37:53.080 --> 37:59.360 |
|
to return back to the origin story of FastAI. |
|
|
|
37:59.360 --> 38:02.520 |
|
Right, so before I started FastAI, |
|
|
|
38:02.520 --> 38:07.160 |
|
I spent a year researching where are the biggest |
|
|
|
38:07.160 --> 38:10.400 |
|
opportunities for deep learning. |
|
|
|
38:10.400 --> 38:14.080 |
|
Because I knew from my time at Kaggle in particular |
|
|
|
38:14.080 --> 38:17.960 |
|
that deep learning had hit this threshold point where it was |
|
|
|
38:17.960 --> 38:20.520 |
|
rapidly becoming the state of the art approach in every area |
|
|
|
38:20.520 --> 38:21.600 |
|
that looked at it. |
|
|
|
38:21.600 --> 38:25.400 |
|
And I'd been working with neural nets for over 20 years. |
|
|
|
38:25.400 --> 38:27.440 |
|
I knew that from a theoretical point of view, |
|
|
|
38:27.440 --> 38:30.760 |
|
once it hit that point, it would do that in just about every |
|
|
|
38:30.760 --> 38:31.600 |
|
domain. |
|
|
|
38:31.600 --> 38:34.480 |
|
And so I spent a year researching |
|
|
|
38:34.480 --> 38:37.120 |
|
what are the domains it's going to have the biggest low hanging |
|
|
|
38:37.120 --> 38:39.400 |
|
fruit in the shortest time period. |
|
|
|
38:39.400 --> 38:43.880 |
|
I picked medicine, but there were so many I could have picked. |
|
|
|
38:43.880 --> 38:47.640 |
|
And so there was a level of frustration for me of like, OK, |
|
|
|
38:47.640 --> 38:50.840 |
|
I'm really glad we've opened up the medical deep learning |
|
|
|
38:50.840 --> 38:53.880 |
|
world and today it's huge, as you know. |
|
|
|
38:53.880 --> 38:58.280 |
|
But we can't do, you know, I can't do everything. |
|
|
|
38:58.280 --> 39:00.400 |
|
I don't even know like, like in medicine, |
|
|
|
39:00.400 --> 39:02.760 |
|
it took me a really long time to even get a sense of like, |
|
|
|
39:02.760 --> 39:05.080 |
|
what kind of problems do medical practitioners solve? |
|
|
|
39:05.080 --> 39:06.400 |
|
What kind of data do they have? |
|
|
|
39:06.400 --> 39:08.520 |
|
Who has that data? |
|
|
|
39:08.520 --> 39:12.480 |
|
So I kind of felt like I need to approach this differently |
|
|
|
39:12.480 --> 39:16.200 |
|
if I want to maximize the positive impact of deep learning. |
|
|
|
39:16.200 --> 39:19.480 |
|
Rather than me picking an area and trying |
|
|
|
39:19.480 --> 39:21.720 |
|
to become good at it and building something, |
|
|
|
39:21.720 --> 39:24.480 |
|
I should let people who are already domain experts |
|
|
|
39:24.480 --> 39:29.240 |
|
in those areas and who already have the data do it themselves. |
|
|
|
39:29.240 --> 39:35.520 |
|
So that was the reason for vast AI is to basically try |
|
|
|
39:35.520 --> 39:38.840 |
|
and figure out how to get deep learning |
|
|
|
39:38.840 --> 39:41.800 |
|
into the hands of people who could benefit from it |
|
|
|
39:41.800 --> 39:45.400 |
|
and help them to do so in as quick and easy and effective |
|
|
|
39:45.400 --> 39:47.080 |
|
a way as possible. |
|
|
|
39:47.080 --> 39:47.560 |
|
Got it. |
|
|
|
39:47.560 --> 39:50.240 |
|
So sort of empower the domain experts. |
|
|
|
39:50.240 --> 39:51.320 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
39:51.320 --> 39:54.200 |
|
And like partly it's because like, |
|
|
|
39:54.200 --> 39:56.280 |
|
unlike most people in this field, |
|
|
|
39:56.280 --> 39:59.960 |
|
my background is very applied and industrial. |
|
|
|
39:59.960 --> 40:02.480 |
|
Like my first job was at McKinsey & Company. |
|
|
|
40:02.480 --> 40:04.640 |
|
I spent 10 years of management consulting. |
|
|
|
40:04.640 --> 40:10.240 |
|
I spend a lot of time with domain experts. |
|
|
|
40:10.240 --> 40:12.800 |
|
You know, so I kind of respect them and appreciate them. |
|
|
|
40:12.800 --> 40:16.440 |
|
And I know that's where the value generation in society is. |
|
|
|
40:16.440 --> 40:21.560 |
|
And so I also know how most of them can't code. |
|
|
|
40:21.560 --> 40:26.320 |
|
And most of them don't have the time to invest, you know, |
|
|
|
40:26.320 --> 40:29.320 |
|
three years in a graduate degree or whatever. |
|
|
|
40:29.320 --> 40:33.520 |
|
So it's like, how do I upskill those domain experts? |
|
|
|
40:33.520 --> 40:36.080 |
|
I think that would be a super powerful thing, |
|
|
|
40:36.080 --> 40:40.200 |
|
you know, the biggest societal impact I could have. |
|
|
|
40:40.200 --> 40:41.680 |
|
So yeah, that was the thinking. |
|
|
|
40:41.680 --> 40:45.680 |
|
So so much of fast AI students and researchers |
|
|
|
40:45.680 --> 40:50.120 |
|
and the things you teach are programmatically minded, |
|
|
|
40:50.120 --> 40:51.520 |
|
practically minded, |
|
|
|
40:51.520 --> 40:55.840 |
|
figuring out ways how to solve real problems and fast. |
|
|
|
40:55.840 --> 40:57.480 |
|
So from your experience, |
|
|
|
40:57.480 --> 41:02.040 |
|
what's the difference between theory and practice of deep learning? |
|
|
|
41:02.040 --> 41:03.680 |
|
Hmm. |
|
|
|
41:03.680 --> 41:07.520 |
|
Well, most of the research in the deep mining world |
|
|
|
41:07.520 --> 41:09.840 |
|
is a total waste of time. |
|
|
|
41:09.840 --> 41:11.040 |
|
Right. That's what I was getting at. |
|
|
|
41:11.040 --> 41:12.200 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
41:12.200 --> 41:16.240 |
|
It's it's a problem in science in general. |
|
|
|
41:16.240 --> 41:19.600 |
|
Scientists need to be published, |
|
|
|
41:19.600 --> 41:21.480 |
|
which means they need to work on things |
|
|
|
41:21.480 --> 41:24.040 |
|
that their peers are extremely familiar with |
|
|
|
41:24.040 --> 41:26.200 |
|
and can recognize in advance in that area. |
|
|
|
41:26.200 --> 41:30.040 |
|
So that means that they all need to work on the same thing. |
|
|
|
41:30.040 --> 41:33.040 |
|
And so it really ink and the thing they work on |
|
|
|
41:33.040 --> 41:35.640 |
|
is nothing to encourage them to work on things |
|
|
|
41:35.640 --> 41:38.840 |
|
that are practically useful. |
|
|
|
41:38.840 --> 41:41.120 |
|
So you get just a whole lot of research, |
|
|
|
41:41.120 --> 41:43.200 |
|
which is minor advances in stuff |
|
|
|
41:43.200 --> 41:44.600 |
|
that's been very highly studied |
|
|
|
41:44.600 --> 41:49.280 |
|
and has no significant practical impact. |
|
|
|
41:49.280 --> 41:50.840 |
|
Whereas the things that really make a difference |
|
|
|
41:50.840 --> 41:52.760 |
|
like I mentioned transfer learning, |
|
|
|
41:52.760 --> 41:55.560 |
|
like if we can do better at transfer learning, |
|
|
|
41:55.560 --> 41:58.160 |
|
then it's this like world changing thing |
|
|
|
41:58.160 --> 42:02.880 |
|
where suddenly like lots more people can do world class work |
|
|
|
42:02.880 --> 42:06.760 |
|
with less resources and less data and. |
|
|
|
42:06.760 --> 42:08.480 |
|
But almost nobody works on that. |
|
|
|
42:08.480 --> 42:10.760 |
|
Or another example, active learning, |
|
|
|
42:10.760 --> 42:11.880 |
|
which is the study of like, |
|
|
|
42:11.880 --> 42:15.880 |
|
how do we get more out of the human beings in the loop? |
|
|
|
42:15.880 --> 42:17.120 |
|
That's my favorite topic. |
|
|
|
42:17.120 --> 42:18.520 |
|
Yeah. So active learning is great, |
|
|
|
42:18.520 --> 42:21.160 |
|
but it's almost nobody working on it |
|
|
|
42:21.160 --> 42:23.800 |
|
because it's just not a trendy thing right now. |
|
|
|
42:23.800 --> 42:27.040 |
|
You know what somebody started to interrupt? |
|
|
|
42:27.040 --> 42:29.720 |
|
He was saying that nobody is publishing |
|
|
|
42:29.720 --> 42:31.520 |
|
on active learning, right? |
|
|
|
42:31.520 --> 42:33.440 |
|
But there's people inside companies, |
|
|
|
42:33.440 --> 42:36.800 |
|
anybody who actually has to solve a problem, |
|
|
|
42:36.800 --> 42:39.600 |
|
they're going to innovate on active learning. |
|
|
|
42:39.600 --> 42:42.080 |
|
Yeah. Everybody kind of reinvents active learning |
|
|
|
42:42.080 --> 42:43.760 |
|
when they actually have to work in practice |
|
|
|
42:43.760 --> 42:46.360 |
|
because they start labeling things and they think, |
|
|
|
42:46.360 --> 42:49.280 |
|
gosh, this is taking a long time and it's very expensive. |
|
|
|
42:49.280 --> 42:51.200 |
|
And then they start thinking, |
|
|
|
42:51.200 --> 42:52.640 |
|
well, why am I labeling everything? |
|
|
|
42:52.640 --> 42:54.840 |
|
I'm only, the machine's only making mistakes |
|
|
|
42:54.840 --> 42:56.040 |
|
on those two classes. |
|
|
|
42:56.040 --> 42:56.880 |
|
They're the hard ones. |
|
|
|
42:56.880 --> 42:58.840 |
|
Maybe I'll just start labeling those two classes |
|
|
|
42:58.840 --> 43:00.360 |
|
and then you start thinking, |
|
|
|
43:00.360 --> 43:01.560 |
|
well, why did I do that manually? |
|
|
|
43:01.560 --> 43:03.000 |
|
Why can't I just get the system to tell me |
|
|
|
43:03.000 --> 43:04.760 |
|
which things are going to be harder steps? |
|
|
|
43:04.760 --> 43:06.200 |
|
It's an obvious thing to do. |
|
|
|
43:06.200 --> 43:11.400 |
|
But yeah, it's just like transfer learning. |
|
|
|
43:11.400 --> 43:14.120 |
|
It's understudied and the academic world |
|
|
|
43:14.120 --> 43:17.440 |
|
just has no reason to care about practical results. |
|
|
|
43:17.440 --> 43:18.360 |
|
The funny thing is, like, |
|
|
|
43:18.360 --> 43:19.920 |
|
I've only really ever written one paper. |
|
|
|
43:19.920 --> 43:21.520 |
|
I hate writing papers. |
|
|
|
43:21.520 --> 43:22.760 |
|
And I didn't even write it. |
|
|
|
43:22.760 --> 43:25.480 |
|
It was my colleague, Sebastian Ruder, who actually wrote it. |
|
|
|
43:25.480 --> 43:28.040 |
|
I just did the research for it. |
|
|
|
43:28.040 --> 43:31.640 |
|
But it was basically introducing successful transfer learning |
|
|
|
43:31.640 --> 43:34.200 |
|
to NLP for the first time. |
|
|
|
43:34.200 --> 43:37.000 |
|
And the algorithm is called ULMfit. |
|
|
|
43:37.000 --> 43:42.320 |
|
And I actually wrote it for the course, |
|
|
|
43:42.320 --> 43:43.720 |
|
for the first day of course. |
|
|
|
43:43.720 --> 43:45.360 |
|
I wanted to teach people NLP. |
|
|
|
43:45.360 --> 43:47.520 |
|
And I thought I only want to teach people practical stuff. |
|
|
|
43:47.520 --> 43:50.560 |
|
And I think the only practical stuff is transfer learning. |
|
|
|
43:50.560 --> 43:53.360 |
|
And I couldn't find any examples of transfer learning in NLP. |
|
|
|
43:53.360 --> 43:54.560 |
|
So I just did it. |
|
|
|
43:54.560 --> 43:57.320 |
|
And I was shocked to find that as soon as I did it, |
|
|
|
43:57.320 --> 44:01.080 |
|
which, you know, the basic prototype took a couple of days, |
|
|
|
44:01.080 --> 44:02.520 |
|
smashed the state of the art |
|
|
|
44:02.520 --> 44:04.760 |
|
on one of the most important data sets in a field |
|
|
|
44:04.760 --> 44:06.720 |
|
that I knew nothing about. |
|
|
|
44:06.720 --> 44:10.400 |
|
And I just thought, well, this is ridiculous. |
|
|
|
44:10.400 --> 44:13.800 |
|
And so I spoke to Sebastian about it. |
|
|
|
44:13.800 --> 44:17.680 |
|
And he kindly offered to write it up the results. |
|
|
|
44:17.680 --> 44:21.360 |
|
And so it ended up being published in ACL, |
|
|
|
44:21.360 --> 44:25.560 |
|
which is the top computational linguistics conference. |
|
|
|
44:25.560 --> 44:28.880 |
|
So like, people do actually care once you do it. |
|
|
|
44:28.880 --> 44:34.160 |
|
But I guess it's difficult for maybe junior researchers. |
|
|
|
44:34.160 --> 44:37.720 |
|
I don't care whether I get citations or papers or whatever. |
|
|
|
44:37.720 --> 44:39.640 |
|
There's nothing in my life that makes that important, |
|
|
|
44:39.640 --> 44:41.240 |
|
which is why I've never actually |
|
|
|
44:41.240 --> 44:43.040 |
|
bothered to write a paper myself. |
|
|
|
44:43.040 --> 44:44.400 |
|
But for people who do, I guess they |
|
|
|
44:44.400 --> 44:50.960 |
|
have to pick the kind of safe option, which is like, |
|
|
|
44:50.960 --> 44:52.720 |
|
yeah, make a slight improvement on something |
|
|
|
44:52.720 --> 44:55.160 |
|
that everybody's already working on. |
|
|
|
44:55.160 --> 44:59.040 |
|
Yeah, nobody does anything interesting or succeeds |
|
|
|
44:59.040 --> 45:01.240 |
|
in life with the safe option. |
|
|
|
45:01.240 --> 45:02.960 |
|
Well, I mean, the nice thing is nowadays, |
|
|
|
45:02.960 --> 45:05.320 |
|
everybody is now working on NLP transfer learning. |
|
|
|
45:05.320 --> 45:12.240 |
|
Because since that time, we've had GPT and GPT2 and BERT. |
|
|
|
45:12.240 --> 45:15.400 |
|
So yeah, once you show that something's possible, |
|
|
|
45:15.400 --> 45:17.680 |
|
everybody jumps in, I guess. |
|
|
|
45:17.680 --> 45:19.320 |
|
I hope to be a part of it. |
|
|
|
45:19.320 --> 45:21.600 |
|
I hope to see more innovation and active learning |
|
|
|
45:21.600 --> 45:22.160 |
|
in the same way. |
|
|
|
45:22.160 --> 45:24.560 |
|
I think transfer learning and active learning |
|
|
|
45:24.560 --> 45:27.360 |
|
are a fascinating public open work. |
|
|
|
45:27.360 --> 45:30.160 |
|
I actually helped start a startup called Platform AI, which |
|
|
|
45:30.160 --> 45:31.760 |
|
is really all about active learning. |
|
|
|
45:31.760 --> 45:34.200 |
|
And yeah, it's been interesting trying |
|
|
|
45:34.200 --> 45:36.920 |
|
to kind of see what research is out there |
|
|
|
45:36.920 --> 45:37.800 |
|
and make the most of it. |
|
|
|
45:37.800 --> 45:39.200 |
|
And there's basically none. |
|
|
|
45:39.200 --> 45:41.040 |
|
So we've had to do all our own research. |
|
|
|
45:41.040 --> 45:44.240 |
|
Once again, and just as you described, |
|
|
|
45:44.240 --> 45:47.640 |
|
can you tell the story of the Stanford competition, |
|
|
|
45:47.640 --> 45:51.520 |
|
Dawn Bench, and fast AI's achievement on it? |
|
|
|
45:51.520 --> 45:51.960 |
|
Sure. |
|
|
|
45:51.960 --> 45:55.560 |
|
So something which I really enjoy is that I basically |
|
|
|
45:55.560 --> 45:59.000 |
|
teach two courses a year, the practical deep learning |
|
|
|
45:59.000 --> 46:02.120 |
|
for coders, which is kind of the introductory course, |
|
|
|
46:02.120 --> 46:04.280 |
|
and then cutting edge deep learning for coders, which |
|
|
|
46:04.280 --> 46:08.080 |
|
is the kind of research level course. |
|
|
|
46:08.080 --> 46:14.320 |
|
And while I teach those courses, I basically |
|
|
|
46:14.320 --> 46:18.440 |
|
have a big office at the University of San Francisco. |
|
|
|
46:18.440 --> 46:19.800 |
|
It'd be enough for like 30 people. |
|
|
|
46:19.800 --> 46:22.960 |
|
And I invite any student who wants to come and hang out |
|
|
|
46:22.960 --> 46:25.320 |
|
with me while I build the course. |
|
|
|
46:25.320 --> 46:26.640 |
|
And so generally, it's full. |
|
|
|
46:26.640 --> 46:30.880 |
|
And so we have 20 or 30 people in a big office |
|
|
|
46:30.880 --> 46:33.880 |
|
with nothing to do but study deep learning. |
|
|
|
46:33.880 --> 46:35.880 |
|
So it was during one of these times |
|
|
|
46:35.880 --> 46:38.640 |
|
that somebody in the group said, oh, there's |
|
|
|
46:38.640 --> 46:41.480 |
|
a thing called Dawn Bench that looks interesting. |
|
|
|
46:41.480 --> 46:42.800 |
|
And I say, what the hell is that? |
|
|
|
46:42.800 --> 46:44.120 |
|
I'm going to set out some competition |
|
|
|
46:44.120 --> 46:46.440 |
|
to see how quickly you can train a model. |
|
|
|
46:46.440 --> 46:50.080 |
|
It seems kind of not exactly relevant to what we're doing, |
|
|
|
46:50.080 --> 46:51.440 |
|
but it sounds like the kind of thing |
|
|
|
46:51.440 --> 46:52.480 |
|
which you might be interested in. |
|
|
|
46:52.480 --> 46:53.960 |
|
And I checked it out and I was like, oh, crap. |
|
|
|
46:53.960 --> 46:55.840 |
|
There's only 10 days till it's over. |
|
|
|
46:55.840 --> 46:58.120 |
|
It's pretty much too late. |
|
|
|
46:58.120 --> 47:01.000 |
|
And we're kind of busy trying to teach this course. |
|
|
|
47:01.000 --> 47:05.640 |
|
But we're like, oh, it would make an interesting case study |
|
|
|
47:05.640 --> 47:08.200 |
|
for the course like it's all the stuff we're already doing. |
|
|
|
47:08.200 --> 47:11.120 |
|
Why don't we just put together our current best practices |
|
|
|
47:11.120 --> 47:12.480 |
|
and ideas. |
|
|
|
47:12.480 --> 47:16.880 |
|
So me and I guess about four students just decided |
|
|
|
47:16.880 --> 47:17.560 |
|
to give it a go. |
|
|
|
47:17.560 --> 47:19.880 |
|
And we focused on this small one called |
|
|
|
47:19.880 --> 47:24.640 |
|
SciFar 10, which is little 32 by 32 pixel images. |
|
|
|
47:24.640 --> 47:26.160 |
|
Can you say what Dawn Bench is? |
|
|
|
47:26.160 --> 47:29.560 |
|
Yeah, so it's a competition to train a model as fast as possible. |
|
|
|
47:29.560 --> 47:31.000 |
|
It was run by Stanford. |
|
|
|
47:31.000 --> 47:32.480 |
|
And as cheap as possible, too. |
|
|
|
47:32.480 --> 47:34.320 |
|
That's also another one for as cheap as possible. |
|
|
|
47:34.320 --> 47:38.160 |
|
And there's a couple of categories, ImageNet and SciFar 10. |
|
|
|
47:38.160 --> 47:42.080 |
|
So ImageNet's this big 1.3 million image thing |
|
|
|
47:42.080 --> 47:45.400 |
|
that took a couple of days to train. |
|
|
|
47:45.400 --> 47:51.240 |
|
I remember a friend of mine, Pete Warden, who's now at Google. |
|
|
|
47:51.240 --> 47:53.760 |
|
I remember he told me how he trained ImageNet a few years |
|
|
|
47:53.760 --> 47:59.440 |
|
ago when he basically had this little granny flat out |
|
|
|
47:59.440 --> 48:01.920 |
|
the back that he turned into was ImageNet training center. |
|
|
|
48:01.920 --> 48:04.240 |
|
And after a year of work, he figured out |
|
|
|
48:04.240 --> 48:07.040 |
|
how to train it in 10 days or something. |
|
|
|
48:07.040 --> 48:08.480 |
|
It's like that was a big job. |
|
|
|
48:08.480 --> 48:10.640 |
|
Whereas SciFar 10, at that time, you |
|
|
|
48:10.640 --> 48:13.040 |
|
could train in a few hours. |
|
|
|
48:13.040 --> 48:14.520 |
|
It's much smaller and easier. |
|
|
|
48:14.520 --> 48:18.120 |
|
So we thought we'd try SciFar 10. |
|
|
|
48:18.120 --> 48:23.800 |
|
And yeah, I've really never done that before. |
|
|
|
48:23.800 --> 48:27.920 |
|
Like, things like using more than one GPU at a time |
|
|
|
48:27.920 --> 48:29.800 |
|
was something I tried to avoid. |
|
|
|
48:29.800 --> 48:32.160 |
|
Because to me, it's very against the whole idea |
|
|
|
48:32.160 --> 48:35.080 |
|
of accessibility, is she better do things with one GPU? |
|
|
|
48:35.080 --> 48:36.480 |
|
I mean, have you asked in the past |
|
|
|
48:36.480 --> 48:39.680 |
|
before, after having accomplished something, |
|
|
|
48:39.680 --> 48:42.520 |
|
how do I do this faster, much faster? |
|
|
|
48:42.520 --> 48:43.240 |
|
Oh, always. |
|
|
|
48:43.240 --> 48:44.680 |
|
But it's always, for me, it's always, |
|
|
|
48:44.680 --> 48:47.640 |
|
how do I make it much faster on a single GPU |
|
|
|
48:47.640 --> 48:50.400 |
|
that a normal person could afford in their day to day life? |
|
|
|
48:50.400 --> 48:54.760 |
|
It's not, how could I do it faster by having a huge data |
|
|
|
48:54.760 --> 48:55.280 |
|
center? |
|
|
|
48:55.280 --> 48:57.240 |
|
Because to me, it's all about, like, |
|
|
|
48:57.240 --> 48:59.560 |
|
as many people should be able to use something as possible |
|
|
|
48:59.560 --> 49:04.160 |
|
without fussing around with infrastructure. |
|
|
|
49:04.160 --> 49:06.080 |
|
So anyway, so in this case, it's like, well, |
|
|
|
49:06.080 --> 49:10.240 |
|
we can use 8GPUs just by renting a AWS machine. |
|
|
|
49:10.240 --> 49:11.920 |
|
So we thought we'd try that. |
|
|
|
49:11.920 --> 49:16.560 |
|
And yeah, basically, using the stuff we were already doing, |
|
|
|
49:16.560 --> 49:20.360 |
|
we were able to get the speed. |
|
|
|
49:20.360 --> 49:25.360 |
|
Within a few days, we had the speed down to a very small |
|
|
|
49:25.360 --> 49:26.040 |
|
number of minutes. |
|
|
|
49:26.040 --> 49:28.800 |
|
I can't remember exactly how many minutes it was, |
|
|
|
49:28.800 --> 49:31.440 |
|
but it might have been like 10 minutes or something. |
|
|
|
49:31.440 --> 49:34.200 |
|
And so yeah, we found ourselves at the top of the leaderboard |
|
|
|
49:34.200 --> 49:38.720 |
|
easily for both time and money, which really shocked me. |
|
|
|
49:38.720 --> 49:40.160 |
|
Because the other people competing in this |
|
|
|
49:40.160 --> 49:41.880 |
|
were like Google and Intel and stuff, |
|
|
|
49:41.880 --> 49:45.360 |
|
where I know a lot more about this stuff than I think we do. |
|
|
|
49:45.360 --> 49:46.800 |
|
So then we emboldened. |
|
|
|
49:46.800 --> 49:50.640 |
|
We thought, let's try the ImageNet one too. |
|
|
|
49:50.640 --> 49:53.280 |
|
I mean, it seemed way out of our league. |
|
|
|
49:53.280 --> 49:57.120 |
|
But our goal was to get under 12 hours. |
|
|
|
49:57.120 --> 49:59.280 |
|
And we did, which was really exciting. |
|
|
|
49:59.280 --> 50:01.440 |
|
And we didn't put anything up on the leaderboard, |
|
|
|
50:01.440 --> 50:03.080 |
|
but we were down to like 10 hours. |
|
|
|
50:03.080 --> 50:10.000 |
|
But then Google put in like five hours or something, |
|
|
|
50:10.000 --> 50:13.360 |
|
and we're just like, oh, we're so screwed. |
|
|
|
50:13.360 --> 50:16.880 |
|
But we kind of thought, well, keep trying. |
|
|
|
50:16.880 --> 50:17.880 |
|
If Google can do it in five hours. |
|
|
|
50:17.880 --> 50:20.760 |
|
I mean, Google did it on five hours on like a TPU pod |
|
|
|
50:20.760 --> 50:24.280 |
|
or something, like a lot of hardware. |
|
|
|
50:24.280 --> 50:26.360 |
|
But we kind of like had a bunch of ideas to try. |
|
|
|
50:26.360 --> 50:28.920 |
|
Like a really simple thing was, why |
|
|
|
50:28.920 --> 50:30.480 |
|
are we using these big images? |
|
|
|
50:30.480 --> 50:36.280 |
|
They're like 224, 256 by 256 pixels. |
|
|
|
50:36.280 --> 50:37.640 |
|
Why don't we try smaller ones? |
|
|
|
50:37.640 --> 50:41.360 |
|
And just to elaborate, there's a constraint on the accuracy |
|
|
|
50:41.360 --> 50:43.080 |
|
that your train model is supposed to achieve. |
|
|
|
50:43.080 --> 50:45.760 |
|
Yeah, you've got to achieve 93%. |
|
|
|
50:45.760 --> 50:47.640 |
|
I think it was for ImageNet. |
|
|
|
50:47.640 --> 50:49.160 |
|
Exactly. |
|
|
|
50:49.160 --> 50:50.240 |
|
Which is very tough. |
|
|
|
50:50.240 --> 50:51.240 |
|
So you have to repeat that. |
|
|
|
50:51.240 --> 50:52.120 |
|
Yeah, 93%. |
|
|
|
50:52.120 --> 50:54.680 |
|
Like they picked a good threshold. |
|
|
|
50:54.680 --> 50:58.920 |
|
It was a little bit higher than what the most commonly used |
|
|
|
50:58.920 --> 51:03.320 |
|
ResNet 50 model could achieve at that time. |
|
|
|
51:03.320 --> 51:08.080 |
|
So yeah, so it's quite a difficult problem to solve. |
|
|
|
51:08.080 --> 51:09.920 |
|
But yeah, we realized if we actually just |
|
|
|
51:09.920 --> 51:16.200 |
|
use 64 by 64 images, it trained a pretty good model. |
|
|
|
51:16.200 --> 51:17.960 |
|
And then we could take that same model |
|
|
|
51:17.960 --> 51:19.560 |
|
and just give it a couple of epochs |
|
|
|
51:19.560 --> 51:21.880 |
|
to learn 224 by 224 images. |
|
|
|
51:21.880 --> 51:24.440 |
|
And it was basically already trained. |
|
|
|
51:24.440 --> 51:25.480 |
|
It makes a lot of sense. |
|
|
|
51:25.480 --> 51:27.200 |
|
Like if you teach somebody, like here's |
|
|
|
51:27.200 --> 51:30.240 |
|
what a dog looks like, and you show them low res versions, |
|
|
|
51:30.240 --> 51:33.640 |
|
and then you say, here's a really clear picture of a dog. |
|
|
|
51:33.640 --> 51:36.000 |
|
They already know what a dog looks like. |
|
|
|
51:36.000 --> 51:39.920 |
|
So that, like, just we jumped to the front, |
|
|
|
51:39.920 --> 51:46.400 |
|
and we ended up winning parts of that competition. |
|
|
|
51:46.400 --> 51:49.680 |
|
We actually ended up doing a distributed version |
|
|
|
51:49.680 --> 51:51.960 |
|
over multiple machines a couple of months later |
|
|
|
51:51.960 --> 51:53.560 |
|
and ended up at the top of the leaderboard. |
|
|
|
51:53.560 --> 51:55.440 |
|
We had 18 minutes. |
|
|
|
51:55.440 --> 51:56.280 |
|
ImageNet. |
|
|
|
51:56.280 --> 52:00.560 |
|
Yeah, and people have just kept on blasting through again |
|
|
|
52:00.560 --> 52:02.320 |
|
and again since then. |
|
|
|
52:02.320 --> 52:06.760 |
|
So what's your view on multi GPU or multiple machine |
|
|
|
52:06.760 --> 52:11.960 |
|
training in general as a way to speed code up? |
|
|
|
52:11.960 --> 52:13.680 |
|
I think it's largely a waste of time. |
|
|
|
52:13.680 --> 52:15.880 |
|
Both multi GPU on a single machine and? |
|
|
|
52:15.880 --> 52:17.640 |
|
Yeah, particularly multi machines, |
|
|
|
52:17.640 --> 52:18.880 |
|
because it's just clunky. |
|
|
|
52:21.840 --> 52:25.320 |
|
Multi GPUs is less clunky than it used to be. |
|
|
|
52:25.320 --> 52:28.520 |
|
But to me, anything that slows down your iteration speed |
|
|
|
52:28.520 --> 52:31.800 |
|
is a waste of time. |
|
|
|
52:31.800 --> 52:36.960 |
|
So you could maybe do your very last perfecting of the model |
|
|
|
52:36.960 --> 52:38.960 |
|
on multi GPUs if you need to. |
|
|
|
52:38.960 --> 52:44.560 |
|
But so for example, I think doing stuff on ImageNet |
|
|
|
52:44.560 --> 52:46.000 |
|
is generally a waste of time. |
|
|
|
52:46.000 --> 52:48.240 |
|
Why test things on 1.3 million images? |
|
|
|
52:48.240 --> 52:51.040 |
|
Most of us don't use 1.3 million images. |
|
|
|
52:51.040 --> 52:54.360 |
|
And we've also done research that shows that doing things |
|
|
|
52:54.360 --> 52:56.840 |
|
on a smaller subset of images gives you |
|
|
|
52:56.840 --> 52:59.280 |
|
the same relative answers anyway. |
|
|
|
52:59.280 --> 53:02.120 |
|
So from a research point of view, why waste that time? |
|
|
|
53:02.120 --> 53:06.200 |
|
So actually, I released a couple of new data sets recently. |
|
|
|
53:06.200 --> 53:08.880 |
|
One is called ImageNet. |
|
|
|
53:08.880 --> 53:12.920 |
|
The French ImageNet, which is a small subset of ImageNet, |
|
|
|
53:12.920 --> 53:15.200 |
|
which is designed to be easy to classify. |
|
|
|
53:15.200 --> 53:17.320 |
|
What's how do you spell ImageNet? |
|
|
|
53:17.320 --> 53:19.200 |
|
It's got an extra T and E at the end, |
|
|
|
53:19.200 --> 53:20.520 |
|
because it's very French. |
|
|
|
53:20.520 --> 53:21.640 |
|
Image, OK. |
|
|
|
53:21.640 --> 53:24.720 |
|
And then another one called ImageWolf, |
|
|
|
53:24.720 --> 53:29.840 |
|
which is a subset of ImageNet that only contains dog breeds. |
|
|
|
53:29.840 --> 53:31.120 |
|
But that's a hard one, right? |
|
|
|
53:31.120 --> 53:32.000 |
|
That's a hard one. |
|
|
|
53:32.000 --> 53:34.360 |
|
And I've discovered that if you just look at these two |
|
|
|
53:34.360 --> 53:39.120 |
|
subsets, you can train things on a single GPU in 10 minutes. |
|
|
|
53:39.120 --> 53:42.040 |
|
And the results you get are directly transferrable |
|
|
|
53:42.040 --> 53:44.320 |
|
to ImageNet nearly all the time. |
|
|
|
53:44.320 --> 53:46.600 |
|
And so now I'm starting to see some researchers start |
|
|
|
53:46.600 --> 53:48.960 |
|
to use these smaller data sets. |
|
|
|
53:48.960 --> 53:51.120 |
|
I so deeply love the way you think, |
|
|
|
53:51.120 --> 53:57.000 |
|
because I think you might have written a blog post saying |
|
|
|
53:57.000 --> 54:00.200 |
|
that going with these big data sets |
|
|
|
54:00.200 --> 54:03.920 |
|
is encouraging people to not think creatively. |
|
|
|
54:03.920 --> 54:04.560 |
|
Absolutely. |
|
|
|
54:04.560 --> 54:08.320 |
|
So year two, it sort of constrains you |
|
|
|
54:08.320 --> 54:09.840 |
|
to train on large resources. |
|
|
|
54:09.840 --> 54:11.280 |
|
And because you have these resources, |
|
|
|
54:11.280 --> 54:14.040 |
|
you think more research will be better. |
|
|
|
54:14.040 --> 54:17.760 |
|
And then you start to like somehow you kill the creativity. |
|
|
|
54:17.760 --> 54:18.000 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
54:18.000 --> 54:20.760 |
|
And even worse than that, Lex, I keep hearing from people |
|
|
|
54:20.760 --> 54:23.480 |
|
who say, I decided not to get into deep learning |
|
|
|
54:23.480 --> 54:26.080 |
|
because I don't believe it's accessible to people |
|
|
|
54:26.080 --> 54:28.560 |
|
outside of Google to do useful work. |
|
|
|
54:28.560 --> 54:31.640 |
|
So like I see a lot of people make an explicit decision |
|
|
|
54:31.640 --> 54:36.000 |
|
to not learn this incredibly valuable tool |
|
|
|
54:36.000 --> 54:39.840 |
|
because they've drunk the Google Kool Aid, which is that only |
|
|
|
54:39.840 --> 54:42.440 |
|
Google's big enough and smart enough to do it. |
|
|
|
54:42.440 --> 54:45.400 |
|
And I just find that so disappointing and it's so wrong. |
|
|
|
54:45.400 --> 54:49.200 |
|
And I think all of the major breakthroughs in AI |
|
|
|
54:49.200 --> 54:53.280 |
|
in the next 20 years will be doable on a single GPU. |
|
|
|
54:53.280 --> 54:57.120 |
|
Like I would say, my sense is all the big sort of. |
|
|
|
54:57.120 --> 54:58.200 |
|
Well, let's put it this way. |
|
|
|
54:58.200 --> 55:00.200 |
|
None of the big breakthroughs of the last 20 years |
|
|
|
55:00.200 --> 55:01.720 |
|
have required multiple GPUs. |
|
|
|
55:01.720 --> 55:05.920 |
|
So like batch norm, value, dropout, |
|
|
|
55:05.920 --> 55:08.080 |
|
to demonstrate that there's something to them. |
|
|
|
55:08.080 --> 55:11.840 |
|
Every one of them, none of them has required multiple GPUs. |
|
|
|
55:11.840 --> 55:15.800 |
|
GANs, the original GANs, didn't require multiple GPUs. |
|
|
|
55:15.800 --> 55:18.040 |
|
Well, and we've actually recently shown |
|
|
|
55:18.040 --> 55:19.680 |
|
that you don't even need GANs. |
|
|
|
55:19.680 --> 55:23.360 |
|
So we've developed GAN level outcomes |
|
|
|
55:23.360 --> 55:24.720 |
|
without needing GANs. |
|
|
|
55:24.720 --> 55:26.880 |
|
And we can now do it with, again, |
|
|
|
55:26.880 --> 55:29.680 |
|
by using transfer learning, we can do it in a couple of hours |
|
|
|
55:29.680 --> 55:30.520 |
|
on a single GPU. |
|
|
|
55:30.520 --> 55:31.600 |
|
So you're using a generator model |
|
|
|
55:31.600 --> 55:32.960 |
|
without the adversarial part? |
|
|
|
55:32.960 --> 55:33.440 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
55:33.440 --> 55:35.880 |
|
So we've found loss functions that |
|
|
|
55:35.880 --> 55:38.680 |
|
work super well without the adversarial part. |
|
|
|
55:38.680 --> 55:41.840 |
|
And then one of our students, a guy called Jason Antich, |
|
|
|
55:41.840 --> 55:44.640 |
|
has created a system called Dealtify, |
|
|
|
55:44.640 --> 55:47.280 |
|
which uses this technique to colorize |
|
|
|
55:47.280 --> 55:48.840 |
|
old black and white movies. |
|
|
|
55:48.840 --> 55:51.480 |
|
You can do it on a single GPU, colorize a whole movie |
|
|
|
55:51.480 --> 55:52.920 |
|
in a couple of hours. |
|
|
|
55:52.920 --> 55:56.080 |
|
And one of the things that Jason and I did together |
|
|
|
55:56.080 --> 56:00.480 |
|
was we figured out how to add a little bit of GAN |
|
|
|
56:00.480 --> 56:03.000 |
|
at the very end, which it turns out for colorization, |
|
|
|
56:03.000 --> 56:06.000 |
|
makes it just a bit brighter and nicer. |
|
|
|
56:06.000 --> 56:07.920 |
|
And then Jason did masses of experiments |
|
|
|
56:07.920 --> 56:10.000 |
|
to figure out exactly how much to do. |
|
|
|
56:10.000 --> 56:12.840 |
|
But it's still all done on his home machine, |
|
|
|
56:12.840 --> 56:15.400 |
|
on a single GPU in his lounge room. |
|
|
|
56:15.400 --> 56:19.200 |
|
And if you think about colorizing Hollywood movies, |
|
|
|
56:19.200 --> 56:21.720 |
|
that sounds like something a huge studio would have to do. |
|
|
|
56:21.720 --> 56:25.280 |
|
But he has the world's best results on this. |
|
|
|
56:25.280 --> 56:27.040 |
|
There's this problem of microphones. |
|
|
|
56:27.040 --> 56:28.640 |
|
We're just talking to microphones now. |
|
|
|
56:28.640 --> 56:29.140 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
56:29.140 --> 56:32.520 |
|
It's such a pain in the ass to have these microphones |
|
|
|
56:32.520 --> 56:34.440 |
|
to get good quality audio. |
|
|
|
56:34.440 --> 56:36.720 |
|
And I tried to see if it's possible to plop down |
|
|
|
56:36.720 --> 56:39.960 |
|
a bunch of cheap sensors and reconstruct higher quality |
|
|
|
56:39.960 --> 56:41.840 |
|
audio from multiple sources. |
|
|
|
56:41.840 --> 56:45.440 |
|
Because right now, I haven't seen work from, OK, |
|
|
|
56:45.440 --> 56:48.760 |
|
we can save inexpensive mics, automatically combining |
|
|
|
56:48.760 --> 56:52.280 |
|
audio from multiple sources to improve the combined audio. |
|
|
|
56:52.280 --> 56:53.200 |
|
People haven't done that. |
|
|
|
56:53.200 --> 56:55.080 |
|
And that feels like a learning problem. |
|
|
|
56:55.080 --> 56:56.800 |
|
So hopefully somebody can. |
|
|
|
56:56.800 --> 56:58.760 |
|
Well, I mean, it's evidently doable. |
|
|
|
56:58.760 --> 57:01.000 |
|
And it should have been done by now. |
|
|
|
57:01.000 --> 57:03.640 |
|
I felt the same way about computational photography |
|
|
|
57:03.640 --> 57:04.480 |
|
four years ago. |
|
|
|
57:04.480 --> 57:05.240 |
|
That's right. |
|
|
|
57:05.240 --> 57:08.240 |
|
Why are we investing in big lenses when |
|
|
|
57:08.240 --> 57:13.160 |
|
three cheap lenses plus actually a little bit of intentional |
|
|
|
57:13.160 --> 57:16.640 |
|
movement, so like take a few frames, |
|
|
|
57:16.640 --> 57:19.840 |
|
gives you enough information to get excellent subpixel |
|
|
|
57:19.840 --> 57:22.440 |
|
resolution, which particularly with deep learning, |
|
|
|
57:22.440 --> 57:25.840 |
|
you would know exactly what you meant to be looking at. |
|
|
|
57:25.840 --> 57:28.200 |
|
We can totally do the same thing with audio. |
|
|
|
57:28.200 --> 57:30.720 |
|
I think the madness that it hasn't been done yet. |
|
|
|
57:30.720 --> 57:33.320 |
|
Has there been progress on photography companies? |
|
|
|
57:33.320 --> 57:33.820 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
57:33.820 --> 57:36.720 |
|
Photography is basically a standard now. |
|
|
|
57:36.720 --> 57:41.120 |
|
So the Google Pixel Nightlight, I |
|
|
|
57:41.120 --> 57:43.240 |
|
don't know if you've ever tried it, but it's astonishing. |
|
|
|
57:43.240 --> 57:45.440 |
|
You take a picture and almost pitch black |
|
|
|
57:45.440 --> 57:49.120 |
|
and you get back a very high quality image. |
|
|
|
57:49.120 --> 57:51.440 |
|
And it's not because of the lens. |
|
|
|
57:51.440 --> 57:55.280 |
|
Same stuff with like adding the bokeh to the background |
|
|
|
57:55.280 --> 57:55.800 |
|
blurring. |
|
|
|
57:55.800 --> 57:57.200 |
|
It's done computationally. |
|
|
|
57:57.200 --> 57:58.520 |
|
Just the pics over here. |
|
|
|
57:58.520 --> 57:59.020 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
57:59.020 --> 58:05.000 |
|
Basically, everybody now is doing most of the fanciest stuff |
|
|
|
58:05.000 --> 58:07.120 |
|
on their phones with computational photography |
|
|
|
58:07.120 --> 58:10.640 |
|
and also increasingly, people are putting more than one lens |
|
|
|
58:10.640 --> 58:11.840 |
|
on the back of the camera. |
|
|
|
58:11.840 --> 58:14.360 |
|
So the same will happen for audio, for sure. |
|
|
|
58:14.360 --> 58:16.520 |
|
And there's applications in the audio side. |
|
|
|
58:16.520 --> 58:19.360 |
|
If you look at an Alexa type device, |
|
|
|
58:19.360 --> 58:21.840 |
|
most people I've seen, especially I worked at Google |
|
|
|
58:21.840 --> 58:26.000 |
|
before, when you look at noise background removal, |
|
|
|
58:26.000 --> 58:29.480 |
|
you don't think of multiple sources of audio. |
|
|
|
58:29.480 --> 58:31.920 |
|
You don't play with that as much as I would hope people would. |
|
|
|
58:31.920 --> 58:33.640 |
|
But I mean, you can still do it even with one. |
|
|
|
58:33.640 --> 58:36.120 |
|
Like, again, it's not much work's been done in this area. |
|
|
|
58:36.120 --> 58:38.440 |
|
So we're actually going to be releasing an audio library |
|
|
|
58:38.440 --> 58:41.040 |
|
soon, which hopefully will encourage development of this |
|
|
|
58:41.040 --> 58:43.200 |
|
because it's so underused. |
|
|
|
58:43.200 --> 58:46.480 |
|
The basic approach we used for our super resolution, |
|
|
|
58:46.480 --> 58:49.960 |
|
in which Jason uses for dealdify of generating |
|
|
|
58:49.960 --> 58:51.920 |
|
high quality images, the exact same approach |
|
|
|
58:51.920 --> 58:53.480 |
|
would work for audio. |
|
|
|
58:53.480 --> 58:57.160 |
|
No one's done it yet, but it would be a couple of months work. |
|
|
|
58:57.160 --> 59:01.600 |
|
OK, also learning rate in terms of dawn bench. |
|
|
|
59:01.600 --> 59:04.280 |
|
There's some magic on learning rate that you played around |
|
|
|
59:04.280 --> 59:04.760 |
|
with. |
|
|
|
59:04.760 --> 59:05.800 |
|
It's kind of interesting. |
|
|
|
59:05.800 --> 59:08.120 |
|
Yeah, so this is all work that came from a guy called Leslie |
|
|
|
59:08.120 --> 59:09.360 |
|
Smith. |
|
|
|
59:09.360 --> 59:12.760 |
|
Leslie's a researcher who, like us, |
|
|
|
59:12.760 --> 59:17.720 |
|
cares a lot about just the practicalities of training |
|
|
|
59:17.720 --> 59:20.000 |
|
neural networks quickly and accurately, |
|
|
|
59:20.000 --> 59:22.120 |
|
which you would think is what everybody should care about, |
|
|
|
59:22.120 --> 59:25.000 |
|
but almost nobody does. |
|
|
|
59:25.000 --> 59:28.120 |
|
And he discovered something very interesting, |
|
|
|
59:28.120 --> 59:30.000 |
|
which he calls super convergence, which |
|
|
|
59:30.000 --> 59:32.360 |
|
is there are certain networks that with certain settings |
|
|
|
59:32.360 --> 59:34.320 |
|
of high parameters could suddenly |
|
|
|
59:34.320 --> 59:37.440 |
|
be trained 10 times faster by using |
|
|
|
59:37.440 --> 59:39.480 |
|
a 10 times higher learning rate. |
|
|
|
59:39.480 --> 59:44.680 |
|
Now, no one published that paper |
|
|
|
59:44.680 --> 59:49.520 |
|
because it's not an area of active research |
|
|
|
59:49.520 --> 59:50.440 |
|
in the academic world. |
|
|
|
59:50.440 --> 59:52.840 |
|
No academics recognize this is important. |
|
|
|
59:52.840 --> 59:56.080 |
|
And also, deep learning in academia |
|
|
|
59:56.080 --> 1:00:00.040 |
|
is not considered a experimental science. |
|
|
|
1:00:00.040 --> 1:00:02.440 |
|
So unlike in physics, where you could say, |
|
|
|
1:00:02.440 --> 1:00:05.360 |
|
I just saw a subatomic particle do something |
|
|
|
1:00:05.360 --> 1:00:07.240 |
|
which the theory doesn't explain, |
|
|
|
1:00:07.240 --> 1:00:10.440 |
|
you could publish that without an explanation. |
|
|
|
1:00:10.440 --> 1:00:12.120 |
|
And then in the next 60 years, people |
|
|
|
1:00:12.120 --> 1:00:14.120 |
|
can try to work out how to explain it. |
|
|
|
1:00:14.120 --> 1:00:16.200 |
|
We don't allow this in the deep learning world. |
|
|
|
1:00:16.200 --> 1:00:20.720 |
|
So it's literally impossible for Leslie to publish a paper that |
|
|
|
1:00:20.720 --> 1:00:23.560 |
|
says, I've just seen something amazing happen. |
|
|
|
1:00:23.560 --> 1:00:25.680 |
|
This thing trained 10 times faster than it should have. |
|
|
|
1:00:25.680 --> 1:00:27.080 |
|
I don't know why. |
|
|
|
1:00:27.080 --> 1:00:28.600 |
|
And so the reviewers were like, well, |
|
|
|
1:00:28.600 --> 1:00:30.280 |
|
you can't publish that because you don't know why. |
|
|
|
1:00:30.280 --> 1:00:31.000 |
|
So anyway. |
|
|
|
1:00:31.000 --> 1:00:32.680 |
|
That's important to pause on because there's |
|
|
|
1:00:32.680 --> 1:00:36.160 |
|
so many discoveries that would need to start like that. |
|
|
|
1:00:36.160 --> 1:00:39.280 |
|
Every other scientific field I know of works of that way. |
|
|
|
1:00:39.280 --> 1:00:42.520 |
|
I don't know why ours is uniquely |
|
|
|
1:00:42.520 --> 1:00:46.480 |
|
disinterested in publishing unexplained |
|
|
|
1:00:46.480 --> 1:00:47.680 |
|
experimental results. |
|
|
|
1:00:47.680 --> 1:00:48.680 |
|
But there it is. |
|
|
|
1:00:48.680 --> 1:00:51.200 |
|
So it wasn't published. |
|
|
|
1:00:51.200 --> 1:00:55.080 |
|
Having said that, I read a lot more |
|
|
|
1:00:55.080 --> 1:00:56.840 |
|
unpublished papers and published papers |
|
|
|
1:00:56.840 --> 1:01:00.080 |
|
because that's where you find the interesting insights. |
|
|
|
1:01:00.080 --> 1:01:02.680 |
|
So I absolutely read this paper. |
|
|
|
1:01:02.680 --> 1:01:08.120 |
|
And I was just like, this is astonishingly mind blowing |
|
|
|
1:01:08.120 --> 1:01:09.760 |
|
and weird and awesome. |
|
|
|
1:01:09.760 --> 1:01:12.400 |
|
And why isn't everybody only talking about this? |
|
|
|
1:01:12.400 --> 1:01:15.520 |
|
Because if you can train these things 10 times faster, |
|
|
|
1:01:15.520 --> 1:01:18.480 |
|
they also generalize better because you're doing less epochs, |
|
|
|
1:01:18.480 --> 1:01:20.080 |
|
which means you look at the data less, |
|
|
|
1:01:20.080 --> 1:01:22.400 |
|
you get better accuracy. |
|
|
|
1:01:22.400 --> 1:01:24.640 |
|
So I've been kind of studying that ever since. |
|
|
|
1:01:24.640 --> 1:01:28.520 |
|
And eventually Leslie kind of figured out |
|
|
|
1:01:28.520 --> 1:01:30.160 |
|
a lot of how to get this done. |
|
|
|
1:01:30.160 --> 1:01:32.280 |
|
And we added minor tweaks. |
|
|
|
1:01:32.280 --> 1:01:34.840 |
|
And a big part of the trick is starting |
|
|
|
1:01:34.840 --> 1:01:37.920 |
|
at a very low learning rate, very gradually increasing it. |
|
|
|
1:01:37.920 --> 1:01:39.800 |
|
So as you're training your model, |
|
|
|
1:01:39.800 --> 1:01:42.120 |
|
you take very small steps at the start. |
|
|
|
1:01:42.120 --> 1:01:44.080 |
|
And you gradually make them bigger and bigger |
|
|
|
1:01:44.080 --> 1:01:46.440 |
|
until eventually you're taking much bigger steps |
|
|
|
1:01:46.440 --> 1:01:49.400 |
|
than anybody thought was possible. |
|
|
|
1:01:49.400 --> 1:01:52.280 |
|
There's a few other little tricks to make it work. |
|
|
|
1:01:52.280 --> 1:01:55.240 |
|
Basically, we can reliably get super convergence. |
|
|
|
1:01:55.240 --> 1:01:56.640 |
|
And so for the dorm bench thing, |
|
|
|
1:01:56.640 --> 1:01:59.320 |
|
we were using just much higher learning rates |
|
|
|
1:01:59.320 --> 1:02:02.200 |
|
than people expected to work. |
|
|
|
1:02:02.200 --> 1:02:03.880 |
|
What do you think the future of, |
|
|
|
1:02:03.880 --> 1:02:05.200 |
|
I mean, it makes so much sense for that |
|
|
|
1:02:05.200 --> 1:02:08.640 |
|
to be a critical hyperparameter learning rate that you vary. |
|
|
|
1:02:08.640 --> 1:02:13.480 |
|
What do you think the future of learning rate magic looks like? |
|
|
|
1:02:13.480 --> 1:02:14.960 |
|
Well, there's been a lot of great work |
|
|
|
1:02:14.960 --> 1:02:17.400 |
|
in the last 12 months in this area. |
|
|
|
1:02:17.400 --> 1:02:20.800 |
|
And people are increasingly realizing that we just |
|
|
|
1:02:20.800 --> 1:02:23.120 |
|
have no idea really how optimizers work. |
|
|
|
1:02:23.120 --> 1:02:25.840 |
|
And the combination of weight decay, |
|
|
|
1:02:25.840 --> 1:02:27.480 |
|
which is how we regularize optimizers, |
|
|
|
1:02:27.480 --> 1:02:30.120 |
|
and the learning rate, and then other things |
|
|
|
1:02:30.120 --> 1:02:32.760 |
|
like the epsilon we use in the atom optimizer, |
|
|
|
1:02:32.760 --> 1:02:36.560 |
|
they all work together in weird ways. |
|
|
|
1:02:36.560 --> 1:02:38.560 |
|
And different parts of the model, |
|
|
|
1:02:38.560 --> 1:02:40.480 |
|
this is another thing we've done a lot of work on, |
|
|
|
1:02:40.480 --> 1:02:43.480 |
|
is research into how different parts of the model |
|
|
|
1:02:43.480 --> 1:02:46.600 |
|
should be trained at different rates in different ways. |
|
|
|
1:02:46.600 --> 1:02:49.040 |
|
So we do something we call discriminative learning rates, |
|
|
|
1:02:49.040 --> 1:02:51.040 |
|
which is really important, particularly for transfer |
|
|
|
1:02:51.040 --> 1:02:53.200 |
|
learning. |
|
|
|
1:02:53.200 --> 1:02:54.880 |
|
So really, I think in the last 12 months, |
|
|
|
1:02:54.880 --> 1:02:57.360 |
|
a lot of people have realized that all this stuff is important. |
|
|
|
1:02:57.360 --> 1:03:00.000 |
|
There's been a lot of great work coming out. |
|
|
|
1:03:00.000 --> 1:03:02.880 |
|
And we're starting to see algorithms |
|
|
|
1:03:02.880 --> 1:03:06.880 |
|
appear which have very, very few dials, if any, |
|
|
|
1:03:06.880 --> 1:03:07.920 |
|
that you have to touch. |
|
|
|
1:03:07.920 --> 1:03:09.240 |
|
So I think what's going to happen |
|
|
|
1:03:09.240 --> 1:03:10.840 |
|
is the idea of a learning rate, well, |
|
|
|
1:03:10.840 --> 1:03:14.360 |
|
it almost already has disappeared in the latest research. |
|
|
|
1:03:14.360 --> 1:03:18.240 |
|
And instead, it's just like, we know enough |
|
|
|
1:03:18.240 --> 1:03:22.440 |
|
about how to interpret the gradients |
|
|
|
1:03:22.440 --> 1:03:23.840 |
|
and the change of gradients we see |
|
|
|
1:03:23.840 --> 1:03:25.440 |
|
to know how to set every parameter of our way. |
|
|
|
1:03:25.440 --> 1:03:26.440 |
|
There you can automate it. |
|
|
|
1:03:26.440 --> 1:03:31.720 |
|
So you see the future of deep learning, where really, |
|
|
|
1:03:31.720 --> 1:03:34.600 |
|
where is the input of a human expert needed? |
|
|
|
1:03:34.600 --> 1:03:36.520 |
|
Well, hopefully, the input of a human expert |
|
|
|
1:03:36.520 --> 1:03:39.680 |
|
will be almost entirely unneeded from the deep learning |
|
|
|
1:03:39.680 --> 1:03:40.560 |
|
point of view. |
|
|
|
1:03:40.560 --> 1:03:43.480 |
|
So again, Google's approach to this |
|
|
|
1:03:43.480 --> 1:03:46.000 |
|
is to try and use thousands of times more compute |
|
|
|
1:03:46.000 --> 1:03:49.400 |
|
to run lots and lots of models at the same time |
|
|
|
1:03:49.400 --> 1:03:51.040 |
|
and hope that one of them is good. |
|
|
|
1:03:51.040 --> 1:03:51.960 |
|
A lot of malkana stuff. |
|
|
|
1:03:51.960 --> 1:03:56.800 |
|
Yeah, a lot of malkana stuff, which I think is insane. |
|
|
|
1:03:56.800 --> 1:04:01.720 |
|
When you better understand the mechanics of how models learn, |
|
|
|
1:04:01.720 --> 1:04:03.800 |
|
you don't have to try 1,000 different models |
|
|
|
1:04:03.800 --> 1:04:05.680 |
|
to find which one happens to work the best. |
|
|
|
1:04:05.680 --> 1:04:08.240 |
|
You can just jump straight to the best one, which |
|
|
|
1:04:08.240 --> 1:04:12.720 |
|
means that it's more accessible in terms of compute, cheaper, |
|
|
|
1:04:12.720 --> 1:04:14.920 |
|
and also with less hyperparameters to set. |
|
|
|
1:04:14.920 --> 1:04:16.800 |
|
That means you don't need deep learning experts |
|
|
|
1:04:16.800 --> 1:04:19.360 |
|
to train your deep learning model for you, |
|
|
|
1:04:19.360 --> 1:04:22.480 |
|
which means that domain experts can do more of the work, which |
|
|
|
1:04:22.480 --> 1:04:24.960 |
|
means that now you can focus the human time |
|
|
|
1:04:24.960 --> 1:04:28.320 |
|
on the kind of interpretation, the data gathering, |
|
|
|
1:04:28.320 --> 1:04:31.360 |
|
identifying model errors, and stuff like that. |
|
|
|
1:04:31.360 --> 1:04:32.840 |
|
Yeah, the data side. |
|
|
|
1:04:32.840 --> 1:04:34.720 |
|
How often do you work with data these days |
|
|
|
1:04:34.720 --> 1:04:38.680 |
|
in terms of the cleaning, Darwin looked |
|
|
|
1:04:38.680 --> 1:04:43.120 |
|
at different species while traveling about, |
|
|
|
1:04:43.120 --> 1:04:45.040 |
|
do you look at data? |
|
|
|
1:04:45.040 --> 1:04:49.400 |
|
Have you, in your roots in Kaggle, just look at data? |
|
|
|
1:04:49.400 --> 1:04:51.320 |
|
Yeah, I mean, it's a key part of our course. |
|
|
|
1:04:51.320 --> 1:04:53.480 |
|
It's like before we train a model in the course, |
|
|
|
1:04:53.480 --> 1:04:55.160 |
|
we see how to look at the data. |
|
|
|
1:04:55.160 --> 1:04:57.920 |
|
And then the first thing we do after we train our first model, |
|
|
|
1:04:57.920 --> 1:05:00.520 |
|
which we fine tune an ImageNet model for five minutes. |
|
|
|
1:05:00.520 --> 1:05:02.240 |
|
And then the thing we immediately do after that |
|
|
|
1:05:02.240 --> 1:05:05.760 |
|
is we learn how to analyze the results of the model |
|
|
|
1:05:05.760 --> 1:05:08.920 |
|
by looking at examples of misclassified images, |
|
|
|
1:05:08.920 --> 1:05:10.880 |
|
and looking at a classification matrix, |
|
|
|
1:05:10.880 --> 1:05:15.080 |
|
and then doing research on Google |
|
|
|
1:05:15.080 --> 1:05:18.000 |
|
to learn about the kinds of things that it's misclassifying. |
|
|
|
1:05:18.000 --> 1:05:19.520 |
|
So to me, one of the really cool things |
|
|
|
1:05:19.520 --> 1:05:21.840 |
|
about machine learning models in general |
|
|
|
1:05:21.840 --> 1:05:24.480 |
|
is that when you interpret them, they |
|
|
|
1:05:24.480 --> 1:05:27.360 |
|
tell you about things like what are the most important features, |
|
|
|
1:05:27.360 --> 1:05:29.400 |
|
which groups you're misclassifying, |
|
|
|
1:05:29.400 --> 1:05:32.440 |
|
and they help you become a domain expert more quickly, |
|
|
|
1:05:32.440 --> 1:05:34.880 |
|
because you can focus your time on the bits |
|
|
|
1:05:34.880 --> 1:05:38.680 |
|
that the model is telling you is important. |
|
|
|
1:05:38.680 --> 1:05:40.760 |
|
So it lets you deal with things like data leakage, |
|
|
|
1:05:40.760 --> 1:05:43.080 |
|
for example, if it says, oh, the main feature I'm looking at |
|
|
|
1:05:43.080 --> 1:05:45.240 |
|
is customer ID. |
|
|
|
1:05:45.240 --> 1:05:47.640 |
|
And you're like, oh, customer ID should be predictive. |
|
|
|
1:05:47.640 --> 1:05:52.280 |
|
And then you can talk to the people that manage customer IDs, |
|
|
|
1:05:52.280 --> 1:05:56.840 |
|
and they'll tell you, oh, yes, as soon as a customer's application |
|
|
|
1:05:56.840 --> 1:05:59.480 |
|
is accepted, we add a one on the end of their customer ID |
|
|
|
1:05:59.480 --> 1:06:01.200 |
|
or something. |
|
|
|
1:06:01.200 --> 1:06:04.360 |
|
So yeah, looking at data, particularly |
|
|
|
1:06:04.360 --> 1:06:06.600 |
|
from the lens of which parts of the data the model says |
|
|
|
1:06:06.600 --> 1:06:09.400 |
|
is important, is super important. |
|
|
|
1:06:09.400 --> 1:06:11.480 |
|
Yeah, and using kind of using the model |
|
|
|
1:06:11.480 --> 1:06:14.240 |
|
to almost debug the data to learn more about the data. |
|
|
|
1:06:14.240 --> 1:06:16.800 |
|
Exactly. |
|
|
|
1:06:16.800 --> 1:06:18.600 |
|
What are the different cloud options |
|
|
|
1:06:18.600 --> 1:06:20.160 |
|
for training your networks? |
|
|
|
1:06:20.160 --> 1:06:22.000 |
|
Last question related to Don Bench. |
|
|
|
1:06:22.000 --> 1:06:24.240 |
|
Well, it's part of a lot of the work you do, |
|
|
|
1:06:24.240 --> 1:06:27.280 |
|
but from a perspective of performance, |
|
|
|
1:06:27.280 --> 1:06:29.480 |
|
I think you've written this in a blog post. |
|
|
|
1:06:29.480 --> 1:06:32.720 |
|
There's AWS, there's a TPU from Google. |
|
|
|
1:06:32.720 --> 1:06:33.440 |
|
What's your sense? |
|
|
|
1:06:33.440 --> 1:06:34.520 |
|
What the future holds? |
|
|
|
1:06:34.520 --> 1:06:37.360 |
|
What would you recommend now in terms of training in the cloud? |
|
|
|
1:06:37.360 --> 1:06:40.520 |
|
So from a hardware point of view, |
|
|
|
1:06:40.520 --> 1:06:45.520 |
|
Google's TPUs and the best Nvidia GPUs are similar. |
|
|
|
1:06:45.520 --> 1:06:47.880 |
|
And maybe the TPUs are like 30% faster, |
|
|
|
1:06:47.880 --> 1:06:51.160 |
|
but they're also much harder to program. |
|
|
|
1:06:51.160 --> 1:06:54.720 |
|
There isn't a clear leader in terms of hardware right now, |
|
|
|
1:06:54.720 --> 1:06:57.840 |
|
although much more importantly, the Nvidia's GPUs |
|
|
|
1:06:57.840 --> 1:06:59.560 |
|
are much more programmable. |
|
|
|
1:06:59.560 --> 1:07:01.280 |
|
They've got much more written problems. |
|
|
|
1:07:01.280 --> 1:07:03.480 |
|
That's the clear leader for me and where |
|
|
|
1:07:03.480 --> 1:07:08.640 |
|
I would spend my time as a researcher and practitioner. |
|
|
|
1:07:08.640 --> 1:07:12.280 |
|
But then in terms of the platform, |
|
|
|
1:07:12.280 --> 1:07:15.680 |
|
I mean, we're super lucky now with stuff like Google, |
|
|
|
1:07:15.680 --> 1:07:21.520 |
|
GCP, Google Cloud, and AWS that you can access a GPU |
|
|
|
1:07:21.520 --> 1:07:25.440 |
|
pretty quickly and easily. |
|
|
|
1:07:25.440 --> 1:07:28.280 |
|
But I mean, for AWS, it's still too hard. |
|
|
|
1:07:28.280 --> 1:07:33.760 |
|
You have to find an AMI and get the instance running |
|
|
|
1:07:33.760 --> 1:07:37.080 |
|
and then install the software you want and blah, blah, blah. |
|
|
|
1:07:37.080 --> 1:07:40.400 |
|
GCP is currently the best way to get |
|
|
|
1:07:40.400 --> 1:07:42.320 |
|
started on a full server environment |
|
|
|
1:07:42.320 --> 1:07:46.120 |
|
because they have a fantastic fast AI in PyTorch, |
|
|
|
1:07:46.120 --> 1:07:51.120 |
|
ready to go instance, which has all the courses preinstalled. |
|
|
|
1:07:51.120 --> 1:07:53.040 |
|
It has Jupyter Notebook prerunning. |
|
|
|
1:07:53.040 --> 1:07:57.080 |
|
Jupyter Notebook is this wonderful interactive computing |
|
|
|
1:07:57.080 --> 1:07:59.440 |
|
system, which everybody basically |
|
|
|
1:07:59.440 --> 1:08:02.920 |
|
should be using for any kind of data driven research. |
|
|
|
1:08:02.920 --> 1:08:05.880 |
|
But then even better than that, there |
|
|
|
1:08:05.880 --> 1:08:09.560 |
|
are platforms like Salamander, which we own, |
|
|
|
1:08:09.560 --> 1:08:13.600 |
|
and Paperspace, where literally you click a single button |
|
|
|
1:08:13.600 --> 1:08:17.240 |
|
and it pops up and you put a notebook straight away |
|
|
|
1:08:17.240 --> 1:08:22.240 |
|
without any kind of installation or anything. |
|
|
|
1:08:22.240 --> 1:08:25.800 |
|
And all the course notebooks are all preinstalled. |
|
|
|
1:08:25.800 --> 1:08:28.560 |
|
So for me, this is one of the things |
|
|
|
1:08:28.560 --> 1:08:34.160 |
|
we spent a lot of time curating and working on. |
|
|
|
1:08:34.160 --> 1:08:35.960 |
|
Because when we first started our courses, |
|
|
|
1:08:35.960 --> 1:08:39.560 |
|
the biggest problem was people dropped out of lesson one |
|
|
|
1:08:39.560 --> 1:08:42.680 |
|
because they couldn't get an AWS instance running. |
|
|
|
1:08:42.680 --> 1:08:44.880 |
|
So things are so much better now. |
|
|
|
1:08:44.880 --> 1:08:47.760 |
|
And we actually have, if you go to course.fast.ai, |
|
|
|
1:08:47.760 --> 1:08:49.040 |
|
the first thing it says is, here's |
|
|
|
1:08:49.040 --> 1:08:50.480 |
|
how to get started with your GPU. |
|
|
|
1:08:50.480 --> 1:08:52.120 |
|
And it's like, you just click on the link |
|
|
|
1:08:52.120 --> 1:08:55.120 |
|
and you click start and you're going. |
|
|
|
1:08:55.120 --> 1:08:56.240 |
|
You will go GCP. |
|
|
|
1:08:56.240 --> 1:08:58.760 |
|
I have to confess, I've never used the Google GCP. |
|
|
|
1:08:58.760 --> 1:09:01.600 |
|
Yeah, GCP gives you $300 of compute for free, |
|
|
|
1:09:01.600 --> 1:09:04.920 |
|
which is really nice. |
|
|
|
1:09:04.920 --> 1:09:10.960 |
|
But as I say, Salamander and Paperspace are even easier still. |
|
|
|
1:09:10.960 --> 1:09:15.120 |
|
So from the perspective of deep learning frameworks, |
|
|
|
1:09:15.120 --> 1:09:18.400 |
|
you work with Fast.ai, if you think of it as framework, |
|
|
|
1:09:18.400 --> 1:09:22.960 |
|
and PyTorch and TensorFlow, what are the strengths |
|
|
|
1:09:22.960 --> 1:09:25.840 |
|
of each platform in your perspective? |
|
|
|
1:09:25.840 --> 1:09:29.240 |
|
So in terms of what we've done our research on and taught |
|
|
|
1:09:29.240 --> 1:09:34.400 |
|
in our course, we started with Theano and Keras. |
|
|
|
1:09:34.400 --> 1:09:38.120 |
|
And then we switched to TensorFlow and Keras. |
|
|
|
1:09:38.120 --> 1:09:40.400 |
|
And then we switched to PyTorch. |
|
|
|
1:09:40.400 --> 1:09:43.360 |
|
And then we switched to PyTorch and Fast.ai. |
|
|
|
1:09:43.360 --> 1:09:47.560 |
|
And that kind of reflects a growth and development |
|
|
|
1:09:47.560 --> 1:09:52.560 |
|
of the ecosystem of deep learning libraries. |
|
|
|
1:09:52.560 --> 1:09:57.040 |
|
Theano and TensorFlow were great, |
|
|
|
1:09:57.040 --> 1:10:01.360 |
|
but were much harder to teach and to do research and development |
|
|
|
1:10:01.360 --> 1:10:04.560 |
|
on because they define what's called a computational graph |
|
|
|
1:10:04.560 --> 1:10:06.680 |
|
up front, a static graph, where you basically |
|
|
|
1:10:06.680 --> 1:10:08.360 |
|
have to say, here are all the things |
|
|
|
1:10:08.360 --> 1:10:12.040 |
|
that I'm going to eventually do in my model. |
|
|
|
1:10:12.040 --> 1:10:15.080 |
|
And then later on, you say, OK, do those things with this data. |
|
|
|
1:10:15.080 --> 1:10:17.160 |
|
And you can't debug them. |
|
|
|
1:10:17.160 --> 1:10:18.560 |
|
You can't do them step by step. |
|
|
|
1:10:18.560 --> 1:10:20.160 |
|
You can't program them interactively |
|
|
|
1:10:20.160 --> 1:10:22.280 |
|
in a Jupyter notebook and so forth. |
|
|
|
1:10:22.280 --> 1:10:24.320 |
|
PyTorch was not the first, but PyTorch |
|
|
|
1:10:24.320 --> 1:10:27.400 |
|
was certainly the strongest entrant to come along |
|
|
|
1:10:27.400 --> 1:10:28.720 |
|
and say, let's not do it that way. |
|
|
|
1:10:28.720 --> 1:10:31.320 |
|
Let's just use normal Python. |
|
|
|
1:10:31.320 --> 1:10:32.880 |
|
And everything you know about in Python |
|
|
|
1:10:32.880 --> 1:10:34.000 |
|
is just going to work. |
|
|
|
1:10:34.000 --> 1:10:37.880 |
|
And we'll figure out how to make that run on the GPU |
|
|
|
1:10:37.880 --> 1:10:40.800 |
|
as and when necessary. |
|
|
|
1:10:40.800 --> 1:10:45.120 |
|
That turned out to be a huge leap in terms |
|
|
|
1:10:45.120 --> 1:10:46.800 |
|
of what we could do with our research |
|
|
|
1:10:46.800 --> 1:10:49.720 |
|
and what we could do with our teaching. |
|
|
|
1:10:49.720 --> 1:10:51.160 |
|
Because it wasn't limiting. |
|
|
|
1:10:51.160 --> 1:10:52.760 |
|
Yeah, I mean, it was critical for us |
|
|
|
1:10:52.760 --> 1:10:55.960 |
|
for something like Dawnbench to be able to rapidly try things. |
|
|
|
1:10:55.960 --> 1:10:58.560 |
|
It's just so much harder to be a researcher and practitioner |
|
|
|
1:10:58.560 --> 1:11:00.520 |
|
when you have to do everything upfront |
|
|
|
1:11:00.520 --> 1:11:03.400 |
|
and you can't inspect it. |
|
|
|
1:11:03.400 --> 1:11:07.360 |
|
Problem with PyTorch is it's not at all |
|
|
|
1:11:07.360 --> 1:11:09.360 |
|
accessible to newcomers because you |
|
|
|
1:11:09.360 --> 1:11:11.600 |
|
have to write your own training loop |
|
|
|
1:11:11.600 --> 1:11:15.680 |
|
and manage the gradients and all this stuff. |
|
|
|
1:11:15.680 --> 1:11:17.920 |
|
And it's also not great for researchers |
|
|
|
1:11:17.920 --> 1:11:20.680 |
|
because you're spending your time dealing with all this boiler |
|
|
|
1:11:20.680 --> 1:11:23.920 |
|
plate and overhead rather than thinking about your algorithm. |
|
|
|
1:11:23.920 --> 1:11:27.760 |
|
So we ended up writing this very multi layered API |
|
|
|
1:11:27.760 --> 1:11:31.040 |
|
that at the top level, you can train a state of the art neural |
|
|
|
1:11:31.040 --> 1:11:33.640 |
|
network in three lines of code. |
|
|
|
1:11:33.640 --> 1:11:35.920 |
|
And which talks to an API, which talks to an API, |
|
|
|
1:11:35.920 --> 1:11:38.880 |
|
which talks to an API, which you can dive into at any level |
|
|
|
1:11:38.880 --> 1:11:45.400 |
|
and get progressively closer to the machine levels of control. |
|
|
|
1:11:45.400 --> 1:11:47.480 |
|
And this is the fast AI library. |
|
|
|
1:11:47.480 --> 1:11:51.920 |
|
That's been critical for us and for our students |
|
|
|
1:11:51.920 --> 1:11:54.200 |
|
and for lots of people that have won big learning |
|
|
|
1:11:54.200 --> 1:11:58.560 |
|
competitions with it and written academic papers with it. |
|
|
|
1:11:58.560 --> 1:12:00.680 |
|
It's made a big difference. |
|
|
|
1:12:00.680 --> 1:12:03.960 |
|
We're still limited though by Python. |
|
|
|
1:12:03.960 --> 1:12:05.920 |
|
And particularly this problem with things |
|
|
|
1:12:05.920 --> 1:12:10.640 |
|
like our current neural nets say where you just can't change |
|
|
|
1:12:10.640 --> 1:12:13.320 |
|
things unless you accept it going so slowly |
|
|
|
1:12:13.320 --> 1:12:15.680 |
|
that it's impractical. |
|
|
|
1:12:15.680 --> 1:12:18.320 |
|
So in the latest incarnation of the course |
|
|
|
1:12:18.320 --> 1:12:20.880 |
|
and with some of the research we're now starting to do, |
|
|
|
1:12:20.880 --> 1:12:24.480 |
|
we're starting to do some stuff in Swift. |
|
|
|
1:12:24.480 --> 1:12:28.920 |
|
I think we're three years away from that being |
|
|
|
1:12:28.920 --> 1:12:31.080 |
|
super practical, but I'm in no hurry. |
|
|
|
1:12:31.080 --> 1:12:35.480 |
|
I'm very happy to invest the time to get there. |
|
|
|
1:12:35.480 --> 1:12:38.000 |
|
But with that, we actually already |
|
|
|
1:12:38.000 --> 1:12:41.840 |
|
have a nascent version of the fast AI library for vision |
|
|
|
1:12:41.840 --> 1:12:44.720 |
|
running on Swift and TensorFlow. |
|
|
|
1:12:44.720 --> 1:12:48.040 |
|
Because Python for TensorFlow is not going to cut it. |
|
|
|
1:12:48.040 --> 1:12:49.920 |
|
It's just a disaster. |
|
|
|
1:12:49.920 --> 1:12:54.440 |
|
What they did was they tried to replicate the bits |
|
|
|
1:12:54.440 --> 1:12:56.640 |
|
that people were saying they like about PyTorch, |
|
|
|
1:12:56.640 --> 1:12:59.160 |
|
this kind of interactive computation. |
|
|
|
1:12:59.160 --> 1:13:02.760 |
|
But they didn't actually change their foundational runtime |
|
|
|
1:13:02.760 --> 1:13:03.920 |
|
components. |
|
|
|
1:13:03.920 --> 1:13:06.640 |
|
So they kind of added this like syntax, sugar, |
|
|
|
1:13:06.640 --> 1:13:08.560 |
|
they call TF Eager, TensorFlow Eager, which |
|
|
|
1:13:08.560 --> 1:13:10.880 |
|
makes it look a lot like PyTorch. |
|
|
|
1:13:10.880 --> 1:13:16.400 |
|
But it's 10 times slower than PyTorch to actually do a step. |
|
|
|
1:13:16.400 --> 1:13:19.080 |
|
So because they didn't invest the time |
|
|
|
1:13:19.080 --> 1:13:22.080 |
|
in retooling the foundations because their code base |
|
|
|
1:13:22.080 --> 1:13:23.520 |
|
is so horribly complex. |
|
|
|
1:13:23.520 --> 1:13:25.280 |
|
Yeah, I think it's probably very difficult |
|
|
|
1:13:25.280 --> 1:13:26.440 |
|
to do that kind of rejoining. |
|
|
|
1:13:26.440 --> 1:13:28.680 |
|
Yeah, well, particularly the way TensorFlow was written, |
|
|
|
1:13:28.680 --> 1:13:31.480 |
|
it was written by a lot of people very quickly |
|
|
|
1:13:31.480 --> 1:13:33.320 |
|
in a very disorganized way. |
|
|
|
1:13:33.320 --> 1:13:36.000 |
|
So when you actually look in the code, as I do often, |
|
|
|
1:13:36.000 --> 1:13:38.840 |
|
I'm always just like, oh, god, what were they thinking? |
|
|
|
1:13:38.840 --> 1:13:41.480 |
|
It's just, it's pretty awful. |
|
|
|
1:13:41.480 --> 1:13:47.080 |
|
So I'm really extremely negative about the potential future |
|
|
|
1:13:47.080 --> 1:13:52.120 |
|
for Python TensorFlow that Swift for TensorFlow |
|
|
|
1:13:52.120 --> 1:13:53.760 |
|
can be a different beast altogether. |
|
|
|
1:13:53.760 --> 1:13:57.560 |
|
It can be like, it can basically be a layer on top of MLIR |
|
|
|
1:13:57.560 --> 1:14:02.640 |
|
that takes advantage of all the great compiler stuff |
|
|
|
1:14:02.640 --> 1:14:04.760 |
|
that Swift builds on with LLVM. |
|
|
|
1:14:04.760 --> 1:14:07.040 |
|
And yeah, it could be absolutely. |
|
|
|
1:14:07.040 --> 1:14:10.320 |
|
I think it will be absolutely fantastic. |
|
|
|
1:14:10.320 --> 1:14:11.920 |
|
Well, you're inspiring me to try. |
|
|
|
1:14:11.920 --> 1:14:17.640 |
|
Evan truly felt the pain of TensorFlow 2.0 Python. |
|
|
|
1:14:17.640 --> 1:14:19.040 |
|
It's fine by me. |
|
|
|
1:14:19.040 --> 1:14:21.080 |
|
But of course. |
|
|
|
1:14:21.080 --> 1:14:23.240 |
|
Yeah, I mean, it does the job if you're using |
|
|
|
1:14:23.240 --> 1:14:27.720 |
|
predefined things that somebody's already written. |
|
|
|
1:14:27.720 --> 1:14:29.920 |
|
But if you actually compare, like I've |
|
|
|
1:14:29.920 --> 1:14:33.680 |
|
had to do a lot of stuff with TensorFlow recently, |
|
|
|
1:14:33.680 --> 1:14:35.480 |
|
you actually compare like, I want |
|
|
|
1:14:35.480 --> 1:14:37.360 |
|
to write something from scratch. |
|
|
|
1:14:37.360 --> 1:14:39.040 |
|
And you're like, I just keep finding it's like, oh, |
|
|
|
1:14:39.040 --> 1:14:41.560 |
|
it's running 10 times slower than PyTorch. |
|
|
|
1:14:41.560 --> 1:14:43.800 |
|
So is the biggest cost. |
|
|
|
1:14:43.800 --> 1:14:47.360 |
|
Let's throw running time out the window. |
|
|
|
1:14:47.360 --> 1:14:49.640 |
|
How long it takes you to program? |
|
|
|
1:14:49.640 --> 1:14:51.000 |
|
That's not too different now. |
|
|
|
1:14:51.000 --> 1:14:54.080 |
|
Thanks to TensorFlow Eager, that's not too different. |
|
|
|
1:14:54.080 --> 1:14:58.640 |
|
But because so many things take so long to run, |
|
|
|
1:14:58.640 --> 1:15:00.320 |
|
you wouldn't run it at 10 times slower. |
|
|
|
1:15:00.320 --> 1:15:03.000 |
|
Like, you just go like, oh, this is taking too long. |
|
|
|
1:15:03.000 --> 1:15:04.240 |
|
And also, there's a lot of things |
|
|
|
1:15:04.240 --> 1:15:05.840 |
|
which are just less programmable, |
|
|
|
1:15:05.840 --> 1:15:09.000 |
|
like tf.data, which is the way data processing works |
|
|
|
1:15:09.000 --> 1:15:11.400 |
|
in TensorFlow, is just this big mess. |
|
|
|
1:15:11.400 --> 1:15:13.160 |
|
It's incredibly inefficient. |
|
|
|
1:15:13.160 --> 1:15:14.800 |
|
And they kind of had to write it that way |
|
|
|
1:15:14.800 --> 1:15:19.160 |
|
because of the TPU problems I described earlier. |
|
|
|
1:15:19.160 --> 1:15:24.680 |
|
So I just feel like they've got this huge technical debt, |
|
|
|
1:15:24.680 --> 1:15:27.960 |
|
which they're not going to solve without starting from scratch. |
|
|
|
1:15:27.960 --> 1:15:29.440 |
|
So here's an interesting question then. |
|
|
|
1:15:29.440 --> 1:15:34.720 |
|
If there's a new student starting today, |
|
|
|
1:15:34.720 --> 1:15:37.480 |
|
what would you recommend they use? |
|
|
|
1:15:37.480 --> 1:15:39.160 |
|
Well, I mean, we obviously recommend |
|
|
|
1:15:39.160 --> 1:15:42.760 |
|
FastAI and PyTorch because we teach new students. |
|
|
|
1:15:42.760 --> 1:15:43.960 |
|
And that's what we teach with. |
|
|
|
1:15:43.960 --> 1:15:46.080 |
|
So we would very strongly recommend that |
|
|
|
1:15:46.080 --> 1:15:50.280 |
|
because it will let you get on top of the concepts much |
|
|
|
1:15:50.280 --> 1:15:51.960 |
|
more quickly. |
|
|
|
1:15:51.960 --> 1:15:53.160 |
|
So then you'll become an action. |
|
|
|
1:15:53.160 --> 1:15:56.400 |
|
And you'll also learn the actual state of the art techniques. |
|
|
|
1:15:56.400 --> 1:15:59.240 |
|
So you actually get world class results. |
|
|
|
1:15:59.240 --> 1:16:03.000 |
|
Honestly, it doesn't much matter what library |
|
|
|
1:16:03.000 --> 1:16:09.240 |
|
you learn because switching from Shaina to MXNet to TensorFlow |
|
|
|
1:16:09.240 --> 1:16:12.000 |
|
to PyTorch is going to be a couple of days work |
|
|
|
1:16:12.000 --> 1:16:15.280 |
|
if you long as you understand the foundation as well. |
|
|
|
1:16:15.280 --> 1:16:21.600 |
|
But you think we'll Swift creep in there as a thing |
|
|
|
1:16:21.600 --> 1:16:22.960 |
|
that people start using? |
|
|
|
1:16:22.960 --> 1:16:26.400 |
|
Not for a few years, particularly because Swift |
|
|
|
1:16:26.400 --> 1:16:33.440 |
|
has no data science community, libraries, schooling. |
|
|
|
1:16:33.440 --> 1:16:39.080 |
|
And the Swift community has a total lack of appreciation |
|
|
|
1:16:39.080 --> 1:16:41.040 |
|
and understanding of numeric computing. |
|
|
|
1:16:41.040 --> 1:16:43.640 |
|
So they keep on making stupid decisions. |
|
|
|
1:16:43.640 --> 1:16:47.480 |
|
For years, they've just done dumb things around performance |
|
|
|
1:16:47.480 --> 1:16:50.280 |
|
and prioritization. |
|
|
|
1:16:50.280 --> 1:16:56.360 |
|
That's clearly changing now because the developer of Chris |
|
|
|
1:16:56.360 --> 1:16:59.960 |
|
Lattner is working at Google on Swift for TensorFlow. |
|
|
|
1:16:59.960 --> 1:17:03.200 |
|
So that's a priority. |
|
|
|
1:17:03.200 --> 1:17:05.000 |
|
It'll be interesting to see what happens with Apple |
|
|
|
1:17:05.000 --> 1:17:10.000 |
|
because Apple hasn't shown any sign of caring |
|
|
|
1:17:10.000 --> 1:17:12.960 |
|
about numeric programming in Swift. |
|
|
|
1:17:12.960 --> 1:17:16.600 |
|
So hopefully they'll get off their arse |
|
|
|
1:17:16.600 --> 1:17:18.840 |
|
and start appreciating this because currently all |
|
|
|
1:17:18.840 --> 1:17:24.240 |
|
of their low level libraries are not written in Swift. |
|
|
|
1:17:24.240 --> 1:17:27.640 |
|
They're not particularly Swifty at all, stuff like Core ML. |
|
|
|
1:17:27.640 --> 1:17:30.840 |
|
They're really pretty rubbish. |
|
|
|
1:17:30.840 --> 1:17:32.760 |
|
So yeah, so there's a long way to go. |
|
|
|
1:17:32.760 --> 1:17:35.360 |
|
But at least one nice thing is that Swift for TensorFlow |
|
|
|
1:17:35.360 --> 1:17:40.000 |
|
can actually directly use Python code and Python libraries. |
|
|
|
1:17:40.000 --> 1:17:44.240 |
|
Literally, the entire lesson one notebook of fast AI |
|
|
|
1:17:44.240 --> 1:17:47.800 |
|
runs in Swift right now in Python mode. |
|
|
|
1:17:47.800 --> 1:17:50.800 |
|
So that's a nice intermediate thing. |
|
|
|
1:17:50.800 --> 1:17:56.800 |
|
How long does it take if you look at the two fast AI courses, |
|
|
|
1:17:56.800 --> 1:18:00.360 |
|
how long does it take to get from 0.0 to completing |
|
|
|
1:18:00.360 --> 1:18:02.360 |
|
both courses? |
|
|
|
1:18:02.360 --> 1:18:04.800 |
|
It varies a lot. |
|
|
|
1:18:04.800 --> 1:18:12.360 |
|
Somewhere between two months and two years, generally. |
|
|
|
1:18:12.360 --> 1:18:15.360 |
|
So for two months, how many hours a day on average? |
|
|
|
1:18:15.360 --> 1:18:20.360 |
|
So like somebody who is a very competent coder |
|
|
|
1:18:20.360 --> 1:18:27.360 |
|
can can do 70 hours per course and pick up. |
|
|
|
1:18:27.360 --> 1:18:28.360 |
|
70, 70. |
|
|
|
1:18:28.360 --> 1:18:29.360 |
|
That's it? |
|
|
|
1:18:29.360 --> 1:18:30.360 |
|
OK. |
|
|
|
1:18:30.360 --> 1:18:36.360 |
|
But a lot of people I know take a year off to study fast AI |
|
|
|
1:18:36.360 --> 1:18:39.360 |
|
full time and say at the end of the year, |
|
|
|
1:18:39.360 --> 1:18:42.360 |
|
they feel pretty competent. |
|
|
|
1:18:42.360 --> 1:18:45.360 |
|
Because generally, there's a lot of other things you do. |
|
|
|
1:18:45.360 --> 1:18:48.360 |
|
Generally, they'll be entering Kaggle competitions. |
|
|
|
1:18:48.360 --> 1:18:51.360 |
|
They might be reading Ian Goodfellow's book. |
|
|
|
1:18:51.360 --> 1:18:54.360 |
|
They might be doing a bunch of stuff. |
|
|
|
1:18:54.360 --> 1:18:57.360 |
|
And often, particularly if they are a domain expert, |
|
|
|
1:18:57.360 --> 1:19:01.360 |
|
their coding skills might be a little on the pedestrian side. |
|
|
|
1:19:01.360 --> 1:19:04.360 |
|
So part of it's just like doing a lot more writing. |
|
|
|
1:19:04.360 --> 1:19:07.360 |
|
What do you find is the bottleneck for people usually, |
|
|
|
1:19:07.360 --> 1:19:11.360 |
|
except getting started and setting stuff up? |
|
|
|
1:19:11.360 --> 1:19:13.360 |
|
I would say coding. |
|
|
|
1:19:13.360 --> 1:19:17.360 |
|
The people who are strong coders pick it up the best. |
|
|
|
1:19:17.360 --> 1:19:21.360 |
|
Although another bottleneck is people who have a lot of |
|
|
|
1:19:21.360 --> 1:19:27.360 |
|
experience of classic statistics can really struggle |
|
|
|
1:19:27.360 --> 1:19:30.360 |
|
because the intuition is so the opposite of what they're used to. |
|
|
|
1:19:30.360 --> 1:19:33.360 |
|
They're very used to trying to reduce the number of parameters |
|
|
|
1:19:33.360 --> 1:19:38.360 |
|
in their model and looking at individual coefficients |
|
|
|
1:19:38.360 --> 1:19:39.360 |
|
and stuff like that. |
|
|
|
1:19:39.360 --> 1:19:42.360 |
|
So I find people who have a lot of coding background |
|
|
|
1:19:42.360 --> 1:19:45.360 |
|
and know nothing about statistics are generally |
|
|
|
1:19:45.360 --> 1:19:48.360 |
|
going to be the best stuff. |
|
|
|
1:19:48.360 --> 1:19:51.360 |
|
So you taught several courses on deep learning |
|
|
|
1:19:51.360 --> 1:19:54.360 |
|
and as Feynman says, the best way to understand something |
|
|
|
1:19:54.360 --> 1:19:55.360 |
|
is to teach it. |
|
|
|
1:19:55.360 --> 1:19:58.360 |
|
What have you learned about deep learning from teaching it? |
|
|
|
1:19:58.360 --> 1:20:00.360 |
|
A lot. |
|
|
|
1:20:00.360 --> 1:20:03.360 |
|
It's a key reason for me to teach the courses. |
|
|
|
1:20:03.360 --> 1:20:06.360 |
|
Obviously, it's going to be necessary to achieve our goal |
|
|
|
1:20:06.360 --> 1:20:09.360 |
|
of getting domain experts to be familiar with deep learning, |
|
|
|
1:20:09.360 --> 1:20:12.360 |
|
but it was also necessary for me to achieve my goal |
|
|
|
1:20:12.360 --> 1:20:16.360 |
|
of being really familiar with deep learning. |
|
|
|
1:20:16.360 --> 1:20:24.360 |
|
I mean, to see so many domain experts from so many different |
|
|
|
1:20:24.360 --> 1:20:28.360 |
|
backgrounds, it's definitely, I wouldn't say taught me, |
|
|
|
1:20:28.360 --> 1:20:31.360 |
|
but convinced me something that I liked to believe was true, |
|
|
|
1:20:31.360 --> 1:20:34.360 |
|
which was anyone can do it. |
|
|
|
1:20:34.360 --> 1:20:37.360 |
|
So there's a lot of kind of snobbishness out there about |
|
|
|
1:20:37.360 --> 1:20:39.360 |
|
only certain people can learn to code, |
|
|
|
1:20:39.360 --> 1:20:42.360 |
|
only certain people are going to be smart enough to do AI. |
|
|
|
1:20:42.360 --> 1:20:44.360 |
|
That's definitely bullshit. |
|
|
|
1:20:44.360 --> 1:20:48.360 |
|
I've seen so many people from so many different backgrounds |
|
|
|
1:20:48.360 --> 1:20:52.360 |
|
get state of the art results in their domain areas now. |
|
|
|
1:20:52.360 --> 1:20:56.360 |
|
It's definitely taught me that the key differentiator |
|
|
|
1:20:56.360 --> 1:21:00.360 |
|
between people that succeed and people that fail is tenacity. |
|
|
|
1:21:00.360 --> 1:21:03.360 |
|
That seems to be basically the only thing that matters. |
|
|
|
1:21:03.360 --> 1:21:07.360 |
|
A lot of people give up. |
|
|
|
1:21:07.360 --> 1:21:13.360 |
|
But if the ones who don't give up pretty much everybody succeeds, |
|
|
|
1:21:13.360 --> 1:21:17.360 |
|
even if at first I'm just kind of thinking, |
|
|
|
1:21:17.360 --> 1:21:20.360 |
|
wow, they really aren't quite getting it yet, are they? |
|
|
|
1:21:20.360 --> 1:21:24.360 |
|
But eventually people get it and they succeed. |
|
|
|
1:21:24.360 --> 1:21:27.360 |
|
So I think that's been, I think they're both things I liked |
|
|
|
1:21:27.360 --> 1:21:29.360 |
|
to believe was true, but I don't feel like I really had |
|
|
|
1:21:29.360 --> 1:21:31.360 |
|
strong evidence for them to be true, |
|
|
|
1:21:31.360 --> 1:21:34.360 |
|
but now I can see I've seen it again and again. |
|
|
|
1:21:34.360 --> 1:21:39.360 |
|
So what advice do you have for someone |
|
|
|
1:21:39.360 --> 1:21:42.360 |
|
who wants to get started in deep learning? |
|
|
|
1:21:42.360 --> 1:21:44.360 |
|
Train lots of models. |
|
|
|
1:21:44.360 --> 1:21:47.360 |
|
That's how you learn it. |
|
|
|
1:21:47.360 --> 1:21:51.360 |
|
So I think, it's not just me. |
|
|
|
1:21:51.360 --> 1:21:53.360 |
|
I think our course is very good, |
|
|
|
1:21:53.360 --> 1:21:55.360 |
|
but also lots of people independently have said it's very good. |
|
|
|
1:21:55.360 --> 1:21:58.360 |
|
It recently won the CogEx Award for AI courses, |
|
|
|
1:21:58.360 --> 1:22:00.360 |
|
it's being the best in the world. |
|
|
|
1:22:00.360 --> 1:22:02.360 |
|
I'd say come to our course, course.fast.ai. |
|
|
|
1:22:02.360 --> 1:22:05.360 |
|
And the thing I keep on harping on in my lessons is |
|
|
|
1:22:05.360 --> 1:22:08.360 |
|
train models, print out the inputs to the models, |
|
|
|
1:22:08.360 --> 1:22:10.360 |
|
print out to the outputs to the models, |
|
|
|
1:22:10.360 --> 1:22:14.360 |
|
like study, you know, change the inputs a bit, |
|
|
|
1:22:14.360 --> 1:22:16.360 |
|
look at how the outputs vary, |
|
|
|
1:22:16.360 --> 1:22:22.360 |
|
just run lots of experiments to get an intuitive understanding |
|
|
|
1:22:22.360 --> 1:22:24.360 |
|
of what's going on. |
|
|
|
1:22:24.360 --> 1:22:28.360 |
|
To get hooked, do you think, you mentioned training, |
|
|
|
1:22:28.360 --> 1:22:32.360 |
|
do you think just running the models inference? |
|
|
|
1:22:32.360 --> 1:22:35.360 |
|
If we talk about getting started. |
|
|
|
1:22:35.360 --> 1:22:37.360 |
|
No, you've got to fine tune the models. |
|
|
|
1:22:37.360 --> 1:22:39.360 |
|
So that's the critical thing, |
|
|
|
1:22:39.360 --> 1:22:43.360 |
|
because at that point, you now have a model that's in your domain area. |
|
|
|
1:22:43.360 --> 1:22:46.360 |
|
So there's no point running somebody else's model, |
|
|
|
1:22:46.360 --> 1:22:48.360 |
|
because it's not your model. |
|
|
|
1:22:48.360 --> 1:22:50.360 |
|
So it only takes five minutes to fine tune a model |
|
|
|
1:22:50.360 --> 1:22:52.360 |
|
for the data you care about. |
|
|
|
1:22:52.360 --> 1:22:54.360 |
|
And in lesson two of the course, |
|
|
|
1:22:54.360 --> 1:22:56.360 |
|
we teach you how to create your own dataset from scratch |
|
|
|
1:22:56.360 --> 1:22:58.360 |
|
by scripting Google image search. |
|
|
|
1:22:58.360 --> 1:23:02.360 |
|
And we show you how to actually create a web application running online. |
|
|
|
1:23:02.360 --> 1:23:05.360 |
|
So I create one in the course that differentiates |
|
|
|
1:23:05.360 --> 1:23:08.360 |
|
between a teddy bear, a grizzly bear, and a brown bear. |
|
|
|
1:23:08.360 --> 1:23:10.360 |
|
And it does it with basically 100% accuracy. |
|
|
|
1:23:10.360 --> 1:23:13.360 |
|
It took me about four minutes to scrape the images |
|
|
|
1:23:13.360 --> 1:23:15.360 |
|
from Google search in the script. |
|
|
|
1:23:15.360 --> 1:23:18.360 |
|
There's a little graphical widgets we have in the notebook |
|
|
|
1:23:18.360 --> 1:23:21.360 |
|
that help you clean up the dataset. |
|
|
|
1:23:21.360 --> 1:23:24.360 |
|
There's other widgets that help you study the results |
|
|
|
1:23:24.360 --> 1:23:26.360 |
|
and see where the errors are happening. |
|
|
|
1:23:26.360 --> 1:23:29.360 |
|
And so now we've got over a thousand replies |
|
|
|
1:23:29.360 --> 1:23:32.360 |
|
in our Share Your Work Here thread of students saying, |
|
|
|
1:23:32.360 --> 1:23:34.360 |
|
here's the thing I built. |
|
|
|
1:23:34.360 --> 1:23:36.360 |
|
And so there's people who, like, |
|
|
|
1:23:36.360 --> 1:23:38.360 |
|
and a lot of them are state of the art. |
|
|
|
1:23:38.360 --> 1:23:40.360 |
|
Like somebody said, oh, I tried looking at Dev and Gary characters |
|
|
|
1:23:40.360 --> 1:23:42.360 |
|
and I couldn't believe it. |
|
|
|
1:23:42.360 --> 1:23:44.360 |
|
The thing that came out was more accurate |
|
|
|
1:23:44.360 --> 1:23:46.360 |
|
than the best academic paper after lesson one. |
|
|
|
1:23:46.360 --> 1:23:48.360 |
|
And then there's others which are just more kind of fun, |
|
|
|
1:23:48.360 --> 1:23:53.360 |
|
like somebody who's doing Trinidad and Tobago hummingbirds. |
|
|
|
1:23:53.360 --> 1:23:55.360 |
|
So that's kind of their national bird. |
|
|
|
1:23:55.360 --> 1:23:57.360 |
|
And Susie's got something that can now classify Trinidad |
|
|
|
1:23:57.360 --> 1:23:59.360 |
|
and Tobago hummingbirds. |
|
|
|
1:23:59.360 --> 1:24:02.360 |
|
So yeah, train models, fine tune models with your dataset |
|
|
|
1:24:02.360 --> 1:24:05.360 |
|
and then study their inputs and outputs. |
|
|
|
1:24:05.360 --> 1:24:07.360 |
|
How much is Fast AI courses? |
|
|
|
1:24:07.360 --> 1:24:09.360 |
|
Free. |
|
|
|
1:24:09.360 --> 1:24:11.360 |
|
Everything we do is free. |
|
|
|
1:24:11.360 --> 1:24:13.360 |
|
We have no revenue sources of any kind. |
|
|
|
1:24:13.360 --> 1:24:15.360 |
|
It's just a service to the community. |
|
|
|
1:24:15.360 --> 1:24:17.360 |
|
You're a saint. |
|
|
|
1:24:17.360 --> 1:24:20.360 |
|
Okay, once a person understands the basics, |
|
|
|
1:24:20.360 --> 1:24:22.360 |
|
trains a bunch of models, |
|
|
|
1:24:22.360 --> 1:24:25.360 |
|
if we look at the scale of years, |
|
|
|
1:24:25.360 --> 1:24:27.360 |
|
what advice do you have for someone wanting |
|
|
|
1:24:27.360 --> 1:24:30.360 |
|
to eventually become an expert? |
|
|
|
1:24:30.360 --> 1:24:32.360 |
|
Train lots of models. |
|
|
|
1:24:32.360 --> 1:24:35.360 |
|
Specifically, train lots of models in your domain area. |
|
|
|
1:24:35.360 --> 1:24:37.360 |
|
So an expert, what, right? |
|
|
|
1:24:37.360 --> 1:24:40.360 |
|
We don't need more expert, like, |
|
|
|
1:24:40.360 --> 1:24:45.360 |
|
create slightly evolutionary research in areas |
|
|
|
1:24:45.360 --> 1:24:47.360 |
|
that everybody's studying. |
|
|
|
1:24:47.360 --> 1:24:50.360 |
|
We need experts at using deep learning |
|
|
|
1:24:50.360 --> 1:24:52.360 |
|
to diagnose malaria. |
|
|
|
1:24:52.360 --> 1:24:55.360 |
|
Well, we need experts at using deep learning |
|
|
|
1:24:55.360 --> 1:25:00.360 |
|
to analyze language to study media bias. |
|
|
|
1:25:00.360 --> 1:25:08.360 |
|
So we need experts in analyzing fisheries |
|
|
|
1:25:08.360 --> 1:25:11.360 |
|
to identify problem areas and the ocean. |
|
|
|
1:25:11.360 --> 1:25:13.360 |
|
That's what we need. |
|
|
|
1:25:13.360 --> 1:25:17.360 |
|
So become the expert in your passion area. |
|
|
|
1:25:17.360 --> 1:25:21.360 |
|
And this is a tool which you can use for just about anything, |
|
|
|
1:25:21.360 --> 1:25:24.360 |
|
and you'll be able to do that thing better than other people, |
|
|
|
1:25:24.360 --> 1:25:26.360 |
|
particularly by combining it with your passion |
|
|
|
1:25:26.360 --> 1:25:27.360 |
|
and domain expertise. |
|
|
|
1:25:27.360 --> 1:25:28.360 |
|
So that's really interesting. |
|
|
|
1:25:28.360 --> 1:25:30.360 |
|
Even if you do want to innovate on transfer learning |
|
|
|
1:25:30.360 --> 1:25:32.360 |
|
or active learning, |
|
|
|
1:25:32.360 --> 1:25:34.360 |
|
your thought is, I mean, |
|
|
|
1:25:34.360 --> 1:25:38.360 |
|
what I certainly share is you also need to find |
|
|
|
1:25:38.360 --> 1:25:41.360 |
|
a domain or data set that you actually really care for. |
|
|
|
1:25:41.360 --> 1:25:42.360 |
|
Right. |
|
|
|
1:25:42.360 --> 1:25:45.360 |
|
If you're not working on a real problem that you understand, |
|
|
|
1:25:45.360 --> 1:25:47.360 |
|
how do you know if you're doing it any good? |
|
|
|
1:25:47.360 --> 1:25:49.360 |
|
How do you know if your results are good? |
|
|
|
1:25:49.360 --> 1:25:51.360 |
|
How do you know if you're getting bad results? |
|
|
|
1:25:51.360 --> 1:25:52.360 |
|
Why are you getting bad results? |
|
|
|
1:25:52.360 --> 1:25:54.360 |
|
Is it a problem with the data? |
|
|
|
1:25:54.360 --> 1:25:57.360 |
|
How do you know you're doing anything useful? |
|
|
|
1:25:57.360 --> 1:26:00.360 |
|
Yeah, to me, the only really interesting research is, |
|
|
|
1:26:00.360 --> 1:26:03.360 |
|
not the only, but the vast majority of interesting research |
|
|
|
1:26:03.360 --> 1:26:06.360 |
|
is try and solve an actual problem and solve it really well. |
|
|
|
1:26:06.360 --> 1:26:10.360 |
|
So both understanding sufficient tools on the deep learning side |
|
|
|
1:26:10.360 --> 1:26:14.360 |
|
and becoming a domain expert in a particular domain |
|
|
|
1:26:14.360 --> 1:26:18.360 |
|
are really things within reach for anybody. |
|
|
|
1:26:18.360 --> 1:26:19.360 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
1:26:19.360 --> 1:26:23.360 |
|
To me, I would compare it to studying self driving cars, |
|
|
|
1:26:23.360 --> 1:26:26.360 |
|
having never looked at a car or been in a car |
|
|
|
1:26:26.360 --> 1:26:29.360 |
|
or turned a car on, which is like the way it is |
|
|
|
1:26:29.360 --> 1:26:30.360 |
|
for a lot of people. |
|
|
|
1:26:30.360 --> 1:26:33.360 |
|
They'll study some academic data set |
|
|
|
1:26:33.360 --> 1:26:36.360 |
|
where they literally have no idea about that. |
|
|
|
1:26:36.360 --> 1:26:37.360 |
|
By the way, I'm not sure how familiar |
|
|
|
1:26:37.360 --> 1:26:39.360 |
|
you are with autonomous vehicles, |
|
|
|
1:26:39.360 --> 1:26:42.360 |
|
but that is literally, you describe a large percentage |
|
|
|
1:26:42.360 --> 1:26:45.360 |
|
of robotics folks working in self driving cars, |
|
|
|
1:26:45.360 --> 1:26:48.360 |
|
as they actually haven't considered driving. |
|
|
|
1:26:48.360 --> 1:26:50.360 |
|
They haven't actually looked at what driving looks like. |
|
|
|
1:26:50.360 --> 1:26:51.360 |
|
They haven't driven. |
|
|
|
1:26:51.360 --> 1:26:52.360 |
|
And it applies. |
|
|
|
1:26:52.360 --> 1:26:54.360 |
|
It's a problem because you know when you've actually driven, |
|
|
|
1:26:54.360 --> 1:26:57.360 |
|
these are the things that happened to me when I was driving. |
|
|
|
1:26:57.360 --> 1:26:59.360 |
|
There's nothing that beats the real world examples |
|
|
|
1:26:59.360 --> 1:27:02.360 |
|
or just experiencing them. |
|
|
|
1:27:02.360 --> 1:27:04.360 |
|
You've created many successful startups. |
|
|
|
1:27:04.360 --> 1:27:08.360 |
|
What does it take to create a successful startup? |
|
|
|
1:27:08.360 --> 1:27:12.360 |
|
Same thing as becoming successful deep learning practitioner, |
|
|
|
1:27:12.360 --> 1:27:14.360 |
|
which is not giving up. |
|
|
|
1:27:14.360 --> 1:27:22.360 |
|
So you can run out of money or run out of time |
|
|
|
1:27:22.360 --> 1:27:24.360 |
|
or run out of something, you know, |
|
|
|
1:27:24.360 --> 1:27:27.360 |
|
but if you keep costs super low |
|
|
|
1:27:27.360 --> 1:27:29.360 |
|
and try and save up some money beforehand |
|
|
|
1:27:29.360 --> 1:27:34.360 |
|
so you can afford to have some time, |
|
|
|
1:27:34.360 --> 1:27:37.360 |
|
then just sticking with it is one important thing. |
|
|
|
1:27:37.360 --> 1:27:42.360 |
|
Doing something you understand and care about is important. |
|
|
|
1:27:42.360 --> 1:27:44.360 |
|
By something, I don't mean... |
|
|
|
1:27:44.360 --> 1:27:46.360 |
|
The biggest problem I see with deep learning people |
|
|
|
1:27:46.360 --> 1:27:49.360 |
|
is they do a PhD in deep learning |
|
|
|
1:27:49.360 --> 1:27:52.360 |
|
and then they try and commercialize their PhD. |
|
|
|
1:27:52.360 --> 1:27:53.360 |
|
It does a waste of time |
|
|
|
1:27:53.360 --> 1:27:55.360 |
|
because that doesn't solve an actual problem. |
|
|
|
1:27:55.360 --> 1:27:57.360 |
|
You picked your PhD topic |
|
|
|
1:27:57.360 --> 1:28:00.360 |
|
because it was an interesting kind of engineering |
|
|
|
1:28:00.360 --> 1:28:02.360 |
|
or math or research exercise. |
|
|
|
1:28:02.360 --> 1:28:06.360 |
|
But yeah, if you've actually spent time as a recruiter |
|
|
|
1:28:06.360 --> 1:28:10.360 |
|
and you know that most of your time was spent sifting through resumes |
|
|
|
1:28:10.360 --> 1:28:12.360 |
|
and you know that most of the time |
|
|
|
1:28:12.360 --> 1:28:14.360 |
|
you're just looking for certain kinds of things |
|
|
|
1:28:14.360 --> 1:28:19.360 |
|
and you can try doing that with a model for a few minutes |
|
|
|
1:28:19.360 --> 1:28:21.360 |
|
and see whether that's something which a model |
|
|
|
1:28:21.360 --> 1:28:23.360 |
|
seems to be able to do as well as you could, |
|
|
|
1:28:23.360 --> 1:28:27.360 |
|
then you're on the right track to creating a startup. |
|
|
|
1:28:27.360 --> 1:28:30.360 |
|
And then I think just being... |
|
|
|
1:28:30.360 --> 1:28:34.360 |
|
Just be pragmatic and... |
|
|
|
1:28:34.360 --> 1:28:36.360 |
|
try and stay away from venture capital money |
|
|
|
1:28:36.360 --> 1:28:38.360 |
|
as long as possible, preferably forever. |
|
|
|
1:28:38.360 --> 1:28:42.360 |
|
So yeah, on that point, do you... |
|
|
|
1:28:42.360 --> 1:28:43.360 |
|
venture capital... |
|
|
|
1:28:43.360 --> 1:28:46.360 |
|
So were you able to successfully run startups |
|
|
|
1:28:46.360 --> 1:28:48.360 |
|
with self funded for quite a while? |
|
|
|
1:28:48.360 --> 1:28:50.360 |
|
Yeah, so my first two were self funded |
|
|
|
1:28:50.360 --> 1:28:52.360 |
|
and that was the right way to do it. |
|
|
|
1:28:52.360 --> 1:28:53.360 |
|
Is that scary? |
|
|
|
1:28:53.360 --> 1:28:55.360 |
|
No. |
|
|
|
1:28:55.360 --> 1:28:57.360 |
|
VCs startups are much more scary |
|
|
|
1:28:57.360 --> 1:29:00.360 |
|
because you have these people on your back |
|
|
|
1:29:00.360 --> 1:29:01.360 |
|
who do this all the time |
|
|
|
1:29:01.360 --> 1:29:03.360 |
|
and who have done it for years |
|
|
|
1:29:03.360 --> 1:29:05.360 |
|
telling you grow, grow, grow, grow. |
|
|
|
1:29:05.360 --> 1:29:07.360 |
|
And they don't care if you fail. |
|
|
|
1:29:07.360 --> 1:29:09.360 |
|
They only care if you don't grow fast enough. |
|
|
|
1:29:09.360 --> 1:29:10.360 |
|
So that's scary. |
|
|
|
1:29:10.360 --> 1:29:13.360 |
|
We're else doing the ones myself |
|
|
|
1:29:13.360 --> 1:29:17.360 |
|
with partners who were friends. |
|
|
|
1:29:17.360 --> 1:29:20.360 |
|
It's nice because we just went along |
|
|
|
1:29:20.360 --> 1:29:22.360 |
|
at a pace that made sense |
|
|
|
1:29:22.360 --> 1:29:24.360 |
|
and we were able to build it to something |
|
|
|
1:29:24.360 --> 1:29:27.360 |
|
which was big enough that we never had to work again |
|
|
|
1:29:27.360 --> 1:29:29.360 |
|
but was not big enough that any VC |
|
|
|
1:29:29.360 --> 1:29:31.360 |
|
would think it was impressive |
|
|
|
1:29:31.360 --> 1:29:35.360 |
|
and that was enough for us to be excited. |
|
|
|
1:29:35.360 --> 1:29:38.360 |
|
So I thought that's a much better way |
|
|
|
1:29:38.360 --> 1:29:40.360 |
|
to do things for most people. |
|
|
|
1:29:40.360 --> 1:29:42.360 |
|
And generally speaking now for yourself |
|
|
|
1:29:42.360 --> 1:29:44.360 |
|
but how do you make money during that process? |
|
|
|
1:29:44.360 --> 1:29:47.360 |
|
Do you cut into savings? |
|
|
|
1:29:47.360 --> 1:29:49.360 |
|
So yeah, so I started Fast Mail |
|
|
|
1:29:49.360 --> 1:29:51.360 |
|
and Optimal Decisions at the same time |
|
|
|
1:29:51.360 --> 1:29:54.360 |
|
in 1999 with two different friends. |
|
|
|
1:29:54.360 --> 1:29:59.360 |
|
And for Fast Mail, |
|
|
|
1:29:59.360 --> 1:30:03.360 |
|
I guess I spent $70 a month on the server. |
|
|
|
1:30:03.360 --> 1:30:06.360 |
|
And when the server ran out of space |
|
|
|
1:30:06.360 --> 1:30:09.360 |
|
I put a payments button on the front page |
|
|
|
1:30:09.360 --> 1:30:11.360 |
|
and said if you want more than 10 meg of space |
|
|
|
1:30:11.360 --> 1:30:15.360 |
|
you have to pay $10 a year. |
|
|
|
1:30:15.360 --> 1:30:18.360 |
|
So run low like I keep your cost down. |
|
|
|
1:30:18.360 --> 1:30:19.360 |
|
Yeah, so I kept my cost down |
|
|
|
1:30:19.360 --> 1:30:22.360 |
|
and once I needed to spend more money |
|
|
|
1:30:22.360 --> 1:30:25.360 |
|
I asked people to spend the money for me |
|
|
|
1:30:25.360 --> 1:30:29.360 |
|
and that was that basically from then on. |
|
|
|
1:30:29.360 --> 1:30:34.360 |
|
We were making money and I was profitable from then. |
|
|
|
1:30:34.360 --> 1:30:37.360 |
|
For Optimal Decisions it was a bit harder |
|
|
|
1:30:37.360 --> 1:30:40.360 |
|
because we were trying to sell something |
|
|
|
1:30:40.360 --> 1:30:42.360 |
|
that was more like a $1 million sale |
|
|
|
1:30:42.360 --> 1:30:46.360 |
|
but what we did was we would sell scoping projects |
|
|
|
1:30:46.360 --> 1:30:50.360 |
|
so kind of like prototypy projects |
|
|
|
1:30:50.360 --> 1:30:51.360 |
|
but rather than doing it for free |
|
|
|
1:30:51.360 --> 1:30:54.360 |
|
we would sell them $50,000 to $100,000. |
|
|
|
1:30:54.360 --> 1:30:57.360 |
|
So again we were covering our costs |
|
|
|
1:30:57.360 --> 1:30:58.360 |
|
and also making the client feel like |
|
|
|
1:30:58.360 --> 1:31:00.360 |
|
we were doing something valuable. |
|
|
|
1:31:00.360 --> 1:31:06.360 |
|
So in both cases we were profitable from six months in. |
|
|
|
1:31:06.360 --> 1:31:08.360 |
|
Nevertheless it's scary. |
|
|
|
1:31:08.360 --> 1:31:10.360 |
|
I mean, yeah, sure. |
|
|
|
1:31:10.360 --> 1:31:13.360 |
|
I mean it's scary before you jump in |
|
|
|
1:31:13.360 --> 1:31:18.360 |
|
and I guess I was comparing it to the scaredyness of VC. |
|
|
|
1:31:18.360 --> 1:31:20.360 |
|
I felt like with VC stuff it was more scary. |
|
|
|
1:31:20.360 --> 1:31:24.360 |
|
Much more in somebody else's hands. |
|
|
|
1:31:24.360 --> 1:31:26.360 |
|
Will they fund you or not? |
|
|
|
1:31:26.360 --> 1:31:28.360 |
|
What do they think of what you're doing? |
|
|
|
1:31:28.360 --> 1:31:30.360 |
|
I also found it very difficult with VC's back startups |
|
|
|
1:31:30.360 --> 1:31:33.360 |
|
to actually do the thing which I thought was important |
|
|
|
1:31:33.360 --> 1:31:35.360 |
|
for the company rather than doing the thing |
|
|
|
1:31:35.360 --> 1:31:38.360 |
|
which I thought would make the VC happy. |
|
|
|
1:31:38.360 --> 1:31:40.360 |
|
Now, VC's always tell you not to do the thing |
|
|
|
1:31:40.360 --> 1:31:41.360 |
|
that makes them happy |
|
|
|
1:31:41.360 --> 1:31:43.360 |
|
but then if you don't do the thing that makes them happy |
|
|
|
1:31:43.360 --> 1:31:45.360 |
|
they get sad. |
|
|
|
1:31:45.360 --> 1:31:48.360 |
|
And do you think optimizing for the whatever they call it |
|
|
|
1:31:48.360 --> 1:31:52.360 |
|
the exit is a good thing to optimize for? |
|
|
|
1:31:52.360 --> 1:31:54.360 |
|
I mean it can be but not at the VC level |
|
|
|
1:31:54.360 --> 1:31:59.360 |
|
because the VC exit needs to be, you know, a thousand X. |
|
|
|
1:31:59.360 --> 1:32:02.360 |
|
So where else the lifestyle exit |
|
|
|
1:32:02.360 --> 1:32:04.360 |
|
if you can sell something for $10 million |
|
|
|
1:32:04.360 --> 1:32:06.360 |
|
then you've made it, right? |
|
|
|
1:32:06.360 --> 1:32:08.360 |
|
So it depends. |
|
|
|
1:32:08.360 --> 1:32:10.360 |
|
If you want to build something that's going to, |
|
|
|
1:32:10.360 --> 1:32:13.360 |
|
you're kind of happy to do forever then fine. |
|
|
|
1:32:13.360 --> 1:32:16.360 |
|
If you want to build something you want to sell |
|
|
|
1:32:16.360 --> 1:32:18.360 |
|
then three years time that's fine too. |
|
|
|
1:32:18.360 --> 1:32:21.360 |
|
I mean they're both perfectly good outcomes. |
|
|
|
1:32:21.360 --> 1:32:24.360 |
|
So you're learning Swift now? |
|
|
|
1:32:24.360 --> 1:32:26.360 |
|
In a way, I mean you already. |
|
|
|
1:32:26.360 --> 1:32:31.360 |
|
And I read that you use at least in some cases |
|
|
|
1:32:31.360 --> 1:32:34.360 |
|
space repetition as a mechanism for learning new things. |
|
|
|
1:32:34.360 --> 1:32:38.360 |
|
I use Anki quite a lot myself. |
|
|
|
1:32:38.360 --> 1:32:41.360 |
|
I actually don't never talk to anybody about it. |
|
|
|
1:32:41.360 --> 1:32:44.360 |
|
Don't know how many people do it |
|
|
|
1:32:44.360 --> 1:32:46.360 |
|
and it works incredibly well for me. |
|
|
|
1:32:46.360 --> 1:32:48.360 |
|
Can you talk to your experience? |
|
|
|
1:32:48.360 --> 1:32:52.360 |
|
Like how did you, what do you, first of all, okay, |
|
|
|
1:32:52.360 --> 1:32:53.360 |
|
let's back it up. |
|
|
|
1:32:53.360 --> 1:32:55.360 |
|
What is space repetition? |
|
|
|
1:32:55.360 --> 1:33:00.360 |
|
So space repetition is an idea created |
|
|
|
1:33:00.360 --> 1:33:03.360 |
|
by a psychologist named Ebbinghaus, |
|
|
|
1:33:03.360 --> 1:33:06.360 |
|
I don't know, must be a couple hundred years ago |
|
|
|
1:33:06.360 --> 1:33:08.360 |
|
or something 150 years ago. |
|
|
|
1:33:08.360 --> 1:33:11.360 |
|
He did something which sounds pretty damn tedious. |
|
|
|
1:33:11.360 --> 1:33:16.360 |
|
He found random sequences of letters on cards |
|
|
|
1:33:16.360 --> 1:33:21.360 |
|
and tested how well he would remember those random sequences |
|
|
|
1:33:21.360 --> 1:33:23.360 |
|
a day later, a week later, whatever. |
|
|
|
1:33:23.360 --> 1:33:26.360 |
|
He discovered that there was this kind of a curve |
|
|
|
1:33:26.360 --> 1:33:29.360 |
|
where his probability of remembering one of them |
|
|
|
1:33:29.360 --> 1:33:31.360 |
|
would be dramatically smaller the next day |
|
|
|
1:33:31.360 --> 1:33:32.360 |
|
and then a little bit smaller the next day |
|
|
|
1:33:32.360 --> 1:33:34.360 |
|
and a little bit smaller the next day. |
|
|
|
1:33:34.360 --> 1:33:37.360 |
|
What he discovered is that if he revised those cards |
|
|
|
1:33:37.360 --> 1:33:42.360 |
|
a day, the probabilities would decrease at a smaller rate |
|
|
|
1:33:42.360 --> 1:33:44.360 |
|
and then if he revised them again a week later, |
|
|
|
1:33:44.360 --> 1:33:46.360 |
|
they would decrease at a smaller rate again. |
|
|
|
1:33:46.360 --> 1:33:51.360 |
|
And so he basically figured out a roughly optimal equation |
|
|
|
1:33:51.360 --> 1:33:56.360 |
|
for when you should revise something you want to remember. |
|
|
|
1:33:56.360 --> 1:34:00.360 |
|
So space repetition learning is using this simple algorithm, |
|
|
|
1:34:00.360 --> 1:34:03.360 |
|
just something like revise something after a day |
|
|
|
1:34:03.360 --> 1:34:06.360 |
|
and then three days and then a week and then three weeks |
|
|
|
1:34:06.360 --> 1:34:07.360 |
|
and so forth. |
|
|
|
1:34:07.360 --> 1:34:10.360 |
|
And so if you use a program like Anki, as you know, |
|
|
|
1:34:10.360 --> 1:34:12.360 |
|
it will just do that for you. |
|
|
|
1:34:12.360 --> 1:34:14.360 |
|
And it will say, did you remember this? |
|
|
|
1:34:14.360 --> 1:34:18.360 |
|
And if you say no, it will reschedule it back to be |
|
|
|
1:34:18.360 --> 1:34:22.360 |
|
appear again like 10 times faster than it otherwise would have. |
|
|
|
1:34:22.360 --> 1:34:27.360 |
|
It's a kind of a way of being guaranteed to learn something |
|
|
|
1:34:27.360 --> 1:34:30.360 |
|
because by definition, if you're not learning it, |
|
|
|
1:34:30.360 --> 1:34:33.360 |
|
it will be rescheduled to be revised more quickly. |
|
|
|
1:34:33.360 --> 1:34:37.360 |
|
Unfortunately though, it doesn't let you fool yourself. |
|
|
|
1:34:37.360 --> 1:34:42.360 |
|
If you're not learning something, you know your revisions |
|
|
|
1:34:42.360 --> 1:34:44.360 |
|
will just get more and more. |
|
|
|
1:34:44.360 --> 1:34:48.360 |
|
So you have to find ways to learn things productively |
|
|
|
1:34:48.360 --> 1:34:50.360 |
|
and effectively treat your brain well. |
|
|
|
1:34:50.360 --> 1:34:57.360 |
|
So using mnemonics and stories and context and stuff like that. |
|
|
|
1:34:57.360 --> 1:34:59.360 |
|
So yeah, it's a super great technique. |
|
|
|
1:34:59.360 --> 1:35:01.360 |
|
It's like learning how to learn is something |
|
|
|
1:35:01.360 --> 1:35:05.360 |
|
which everybody should learn before they actually learn anything. |
|
|
|
1:35:05.360 --> 1:35:07.360 |
|
But almost nobody does. |
|
|
|
1:35:07.360 --> 1:35:10.360 |
|
Yes, so what have you, so it certainly works well |
|
|
|
1:35:10.360 --> 1:35:14.360 |
|
for learning new languages, for, I mean, for learning, |
|
|
|
1:35:14.360 --> 1:35:16.360 |
|
like small projects almost. |
|
|
|
1:35:16.360 --> 1:35:19.360 |
|
But do you, you know, I started using it for, |
|
|
|
1:35:19.360 --> 1:35:22.360 |
|
I forget who wrote a blog post about this inspired me. |
|
|
|
1:35:22.360 --> 1:35:25.360 |
|
It might have been you, I'm not sure. |
|
|
|
1:35:25.360 --> 1:35:28.360 |
|
I started when I read papers. |
|
|
|
1:35:28.360 --> 1:35:31.360 |
|
I'll, concepts and ideas, I'll put them. |
|
|
|
1:35:31.360 --> 1:35:32.360 |
|
Was it Michael Nielsen? |
|
|
|
1:35:32.360 --> 1:35:33.360 |
|
It was Michael Nielsen. |
|
|
|
1:35:33.360 --> 1:35:34.360 |
|
Yeah, it was Michael Nielsen. |
|
|
|
1:35:34.360 --> 1:35:36.360 |
|
Michael started doing this recently |
|
|
|
1:35:36.360 --> 1:35:39.360 |
|
and has been writing about it. |
|
|
|
1:35:39.360 --> 1:35:44.360 |
|
I, so the kind of today's ebbing house is a guy called Peter Wozniak |
|
|
|
1:35:44.360 --> 1:35:47.360 |
|
who developed a system called Super Memo. |
|
|
|
1:35:47.360 --> 1:35:51.360 |
|
And he's been basically trying to become like |
|
|
|
1:35:51.360 --> 1:35:55.360 |
|
the world's greatest renaissance man over the last few decades. |
|
|
|
1:35:55.360 --> 1:36:00.360 |
|
He's basically lived his life with space repetition learning |
|
|
|
1:36:00.360 --> 1:36:03.360 |
|
for everything. |
|
|
|
1:36:03.360 --> 1:36:07.360 |
|
I, and sort of like Michael's only very recently got into this, |
|
|
|
1:36:07.360 --> 1:36:09.360 |
|
but he started really getting excited about doing it |
|
|
|
1:36:09.360 --> 1:36:10.360 |
|
for a lot of different things. |
|
|
|
1:36:10.360 --> 1:36:14.360 |
|
For me personally, I actually don't use it |
|
|
|
1:36:14.360 --> 1:36:16.360 |
|
for anything except Chinese. |
|
|
|
1:36:16.360 --> 1:36:21.360 |
|
And the reason for that is that Chinese is specifically a thing. |
|
|
|
1:36:21.360 --> 1:36:26.360 |
|
I made a conscious decision that I want to continue to remember |
|
|
|
1:36:26.360 --> 1:36:29.360 |
|
even if I don't get much of a chance to exercise it |
|
|
|
1:36:29.360 --> 1:36:33.360 |
|
because like I'm not often in China, so I don't. |
|
|
|
1:36:33.360 --> 1:36:37.360 |
|
Or else something like programming languages or papers, |
|
|
|
1:36:37.360 --> 1:36:39.360 |
|
they have a very different approach, |
|
|
|
1:36:39.360 --> 1:36:42.360 |
|
which is I try not to learn anything from them, |
|
|
|
1:36:42.360 --> 1:36:46.360 |
|
but instead I try to identify the important concepts |
|
|
|
1:36:46.360 --> 1:36:48.360 |
|
and like actually ingest them. |
|
|
|
1:36:48.360 --> 1:36:53.360 |
|
So like really understand that concept deeply |
|
|
|
1:36:53.360 --> 1:36:54.360 |
|
and study it carefully. |
|
|
|
1:36:54.360 --> 1:36:56.360 |
|
Well, decide if it really is important. |
|
|
|
1:36:56.360 --> 1:37:00.360 |
|
If it is like incorporate it into our library, |
|
|
|
1:37:00.360 --> 1:37:03.360 |
|
you know, incorporate it into how I do things |
|
|
|
1:37:03.360 --> 1:37:06.360 |
|
or decide it's not worth it. |
|
|
|
1:37:06.360 --> 1:37:12.360 |
|
So I find I then remember the things that I care about |
|
|
|
1:37:12.360 --> 1:37:15.360 |
|
because I'm using it all the time. |
|
|
|
1:37:15.360 --> 1:37:19.360 |
|
So for the last 25 years, |
|
|
|
1:37:19.360 --> 1:37:23.360 |
|
I've committed to spending at least half of every day |
|
|
|
1:37:23.360 --> 1:37:25.360 |
|
learning or practicing something new, |
|
|
|
1:37:25.360 --> 1:37:28.360 |
|
which is all my colleagues have always hated |
|
|
|
1:37:28.360 --> 1:37:30.360 |
|
because it always looks like I'm not working on |
|
|
|
1:37:30.360 --> 1:37:31.360 |
|
what I'm meant to be working on, |
|
|
|
1:37:31.360 --> 1:37:34.360 |
|
but that always means I do everything faster |
|
|
|
1:37:34.360 --> 1:37:36.360 |
|
because I've been practicing a lot of stuff. |
|
|
|
1:37:36.360 --> 1:37:39.360 |
|
So I kind of give myself a lot of opportunity |
|
|
|
1:37:39.360 --> 1:37:41.360 |
|
to practice new things. |
|
|
|
1:37:41.360 --> 1:37:47.360 |
|
And so I find now I don't often kind of find myself |
|
|
|
1:37:47.360 --> 1:37:50.360 |
|
wishing I could remember something |
|
|
|
1:37:50.360 --> 1:37:51.360 |
|
because if it's something that's useful, |
|
|
|
1:37:51.360 --> 1:37:53.360 |
|
then I've been using it a lot. |
|
|
|
1:37:53.360 --> 1:37:55.360 |
|
It's easy enough to look it up on Google. |
|
|
|
1:37:55.360 --> 1:37:59.360 |
|
But speaking Chinese, you can't look it up on Google. |
|
|
|
1:37:59.360 --> 1:38:01.360 |
|
Do you have advice for people learning new things? |
|
|
|
1:38:01.360 --> 1:38:04.360 |
|
What have you learned as a process? |
|
|
|
1:38:04.360 --> 1:38:07.360 |
|
I mean, it all starts just making the hours |
|
|
|
1:38:07.360 --> 1:38:08.360 |
|
and the day available. |
|
|
|
1:38:08.360 --> 1:38:10.360 |
|
Yeah, you've got to stick with it, |
|
|
|
1:38:10.360 --> 1:38:12.360 |
|
which is, again, the number one thing |
|
|
|
1:38:12.360 --> 1:38:14.360 |
|
that 99% of people don't do. |
|
|
|
1:38:14.360 --> 1:38:16.360 |
|
So the people I started learning Chinese with, |
|
|
|
1:38:16.360 --> 1:38:18.360 |
|
none of them were still doing it 12 months later. |
|
|
|
1:38:18.360 --> 1:38:20.360 |
|
I'm still doing it 10 years later. |
|
|
|
1:38:20.360 --> 1:38:22.360 |
|
I tried to stay in touch with them, |
|
|
|
1:38:22.360 --> 1:38:24.360 |
|
but they just, no one did it. |
|
|
|
1:38:24.360 --> 1:38:26.360 |
|
For something like Chinese, |
|
|
|
1:38:26.360 --> 1:38:28.360 |
|
like study how human learning works. |
|
|
|
1:38:28.360 --> 1:38:31.360 |
|
So every one of my Chinese flashcards |
|
|
|
1:38:31.360 --> 1:38:33.360 |
|
is associated with a story, |
|
|
|
1:38:33.360 --> 1:38:36.360 |
|
and that story is specifically designed to be memorable. |
|
|
|
1:38:36.360 --> 1:38:38.360 |
|
And we find things memorable, |
|
|
|
1:38:38.360 --> 1:38:41.360 |
|
funny or disgusting or sexy |
|
|
|
1:38:41.360 --> 1:38:44.360 |
|
or related to people that we know or care about. |
|
|
|
1:38:44.360 --> 1:38:47.360 |
|
So I try to make sure all the stories that are in my head |
|
|
|
1:38:47.360 --> 1:38:50.360 |
|
have those characteristics. |
|
|
|
1:38:50.360 --> 1:38:52.360 |
|
Yeah, so you have to, you know, |
|
|
|
1:38:52.360 --> 1:38:55.360 |
|
you won't remember things well if they don't have some context. |
|
|
|
1:38:55.360 --> 1:38:57.360 |
|
And yeah, you won't remember them well |
|
|
|
1:38:57.360 --> 1:39:00.360 |
|
if you don't regularly practice them, |
|
|
|
1:39:00.360 --> 1:39:02.360 |
|
whether it be just part of your day to day life |
|
|
|
1:39:02.360 --> 1:39:05.360 |
|
for the Chinese and me flashcards. |
|
|
|
1:39:05.360 --> 1:39:09.360 |
|
I mean, the other thing is, let yourself fail sometimes. |
|
|
|
1:39:09.360 --> 1:39:11.360 |
|
So like, I've had various medical problems |
|
|
|
1:39:11.360 --> 1:39:13.360 |
|
over the last few years, |
|
|
|
1:39:13.360 --> 1:39:16.360 |
|
and basically my flashcards just stopped |
|
|
|
1:39:16.360 --> 1:39:18.360 |
|
for about three years. |
|
|
|
1:39:18.360 --> 1:39:21.360 |
|
And then there've been other times I've stopped |
|
|
|
1:39:21.360 --> 1:39:24.360 |
|
for a few months, and it's so hard because you get back to it, |
|
|
|
1:39:24.360 --> 1:39:27.360 |
|
and it's like, you have 18,000 cards due. |
|
|
|
1:39:27.360 --> 1:39:30.360 |
|
It's like, and so you just have to go, |
|
|
|
1:39:30.360 --> 1:39:33.360 |
|
all right, well, I can either stop and give up everything |
|
|
|
1:39:33.360 --> 1:39:36.360 |
|
or just decide to do this every day for the next two years |
|
|
|
1:39:36.360 --> 1:39:38.360 |
|
until I get back to it. |
|
|
|
1:39:38.360 --> 1:39:41.360 |
|
The amazing thing has been that even after three years, |
|
|
|
1:39:41.360 --> 1:39:45.360 |
|
I, you know, the Chinese were still in there. |
|
|
|
1:39:45.360 --> 1:39:47.360 |
|
Like, it was so much faster to relearn |
|
|
|
1:39:47.360 --> 1:39:49.360 |
|
than it was to mine the first time. |
|
|
|
1:39:49.360 --> 1:39:51.360 |
|
Yeah, absolutely. |
|
|
|
1:39:51.360 --> 1:39:52.360 |
|
It's in there. |
|
|
|
1:39:52.360 --> 1:39:55.360 |
|
I have the same with guitar, with music and so on. |
|
|
|
1:39:55.360 --> 1:39:58.360 |
|
It's sad because work sometimes takes away |
|
|
|
1:39:58.360 --> 1:40:00.360 |
|
and then you won't play for a year. |
|
|
|
1:40:00.360 --> 1:40:03.360 |
|
But really, if you then just get back to it every day, |
|
|
|
1:40:03.360 --> 1:40:05.360 |
|
you're right there again. |
|
|
|
1:40:05.360 --> 1:40:08.360 |
|
What do you think is the next big breakthrough |
|
|
|
1:40:08.360 --> 1:40:09.360 |
|
in artificial intelligence? |
|
|
|
1:40:09.360 --> 1:40:12.360 |
|
What are your hopes in deep learning or beyond |
|
|
|
1:40:12.360 --> 1:40:14.360 |
|
that people should be working on, |
|
|
|
1:40:14.360 --> 1:40:16.360 |
|
or you hope there'll be breakthroughs? |
|
|
|
1:40:16.360 --> 1:40:18.360 |
|
I don't think it's possible to predict. |
|
|
|
1:40:18.360 --> 1:40:20.360 |
|
I think what we already have |
|
|
|
1:40:20.360 --> 1:40:23.360 |
|
is an incredibly powerful platform |
|
|
|
1:40:23.360 --> 1:40:26.360 |
|
to solve lots of societally important problems |
|
|
|
1:40:26.360 --> 1:40:28.360 |
|
that are currently unsolved. |
|
|
|
1:40:28.360 --> 1:40:30.360 |
|
I just hope that people will, lots of people |
|
|
|
1:40:30.360 --> 1:40:33.360 |
|
will learn this toolkit and try to use it. |
|
|
|
1:40:33.360 --> 1:40:36.360 |
|
I don't think we need a lot of new technological breakthroughs |
|
|
|
1:40:36.360 --> 1:40:39.360 |
|
to do a lot of great work right now. |
|
|
|
1:40:39.360 --> 1:40:42.360 |
|
And when do you think we're going to create |
|
|
|
1:40:42.360 --> 1:40:44.360 |
|
a human level intelligence system? |
|
|
|
1:40:44.360 --> 1:40:45.360 |
|
Do you think? |
|
|
|
1:40:45.360 --> 1:40:46.360 |
|
I don't know. |
|
|
|
1:40:46.360 --> 1:40:47.360 |
|
How hard is it? |
|
|
|
1:40:47.360 --> 1:40:48.360 |
|
How far away are we? |
|
|
|
1:40:48.360 --> 1:40:49.360 |
|
I don't know. |
|
|
|
1:40:49.360 --> 1:40:50.360 |
|
I have no way to know. |
|
|
|
1:40:50.360 --> 1:40:51.360 |
|
I don't know. |
|
|
|
1:40:51.360 --> 1:40:53.360 |
|
Like, I don't know why people make predictions about this |
|
|
|
1:40:53.360 --> 1:40:57.360 |
|
because there's no data and nothing to go on. |
|
|
|
1:40:57.360 --> 1:40:59.360 |
|
And it's just like, |
|
|
|
1:40:59.360 --> 1:41:03.360 |
|
there's so many societally important problems |
|
|
|
1:41:03.360 --> 1:41:04.360 |
|
to solve right now, |
|
|
|
1:41:04.360 --> 1:41:08.360 |
|
I just don't find it a really interesting question |
|
|
|
1:41:08.360 --> 1:41:09.360 |
|
to even answer. |
|
|
|
1:41:09.360 --> 1:41:12.360 |
|
So in terms of societally important problems, |
|
|
|
1:41:12.360 --> 1:41:15.360 |
|
what's the problem that is within reach? |
|
|
|
1:41:15.360 --> 1:41:17.360 |
|
Well, I mean, for example, |
|
|
|
1:41:17.360 --> 1:41:19.360 |
|
there are problems that AI creates, right? |
|
|
|
1:41:19.360 --> 1:41:21.360 |
|
So more specifically, |
|
|
|
1:41:22.360 --> 1:41:26.360 |
|
labor force displacement is going to be huge |
|
|
|
1:41:26.360 --> 1:41:28.360 |
|
and people keep making this |
|
|
|
1:41:28.360 --> 1:41:31.360 |
|
frivolous econometric argument of being like, |
|
|
|
1:41:31.360 --> 1:41:33.360 |
|
oh, there's been other things that aren't AI |
|
|
|
1:41:33.360 --> 1:41:34.360 |
|
that have come along before |
|
|
|
1:41:34.360 --> 1:41:37.360 |
|
and haven't created massive labor force displacement. |
|
|
|
1:41:37.360 --> 1:41:39.360 |
|
Therefore, AI won't. |
|
|
|
1:41:39.360 --> 1:41:41.360 |
|
So that's a serious concern for you? |
|
|
|
1:41:41.360 --> 1:41:42.360 |
|
Oh, yeah. |
|
|
|
1:41:42.360 --> 1:41:43.360 |
|
Andrew Yang is running on it. |
|
|
|
1:41:43.360 --> 1:41:44.360 |
|
Yeah. |
|
|
|
1:41:44.360 --> 1:41:46.360 |
|
It's desperately concerned. |
|
|
|
1:41:46.360 --> 1:41:52.360 |
|
And you see already that the changing workplace |
|
|
|
1:41:52.360 --> 1:41:55.360 |
|
has lived to a hollowing out of the middle class. |
|
|
|
1:41:55.360 --> 1:41:58.360 |
|
You're seeing that students coming out of school today |
|
|
|
1:41:58.360 --> 1:42:03.360 |
|
have a less rosy financial future ahead of them |
|
|
|
1:42:03.360 --> 1:42:04.360 |
|
than the parents did, |
|
|
|
1:42:04.360 --> 1:42:06.360 |
|
which has never happened in recent, |
|
|
|
1:42:06.360 --> 1:42:08.360 |
|
in the last 300 years. |
|
|
|
1:42:08.360 --> 1:42:11.360 |
|
We've always had progress before. |
|
|
|
1:42:11.360 --> 1:42:16.360 |
|
And you see this turning into anxiety and despair |
|
|
|
1:42:16.360 --> 1:42:19.360 |
|
and even violence. |
|
|
|
1:42:19.360 --> 1:42:21.360 |
|
So I very much worry about that. |
|
|
|
1:42:21.360 --> 1:42:24.360 |
|
You've written quite a bit about ethics, too. |
|
|
|
1:42:24.360 --> 1:42:27.360 |
|
I do think that every data scientist |
|
|
|
1:42:27.360 --> 1:42:32.360 |
|
working with deep learning needs to recognize |
|
|
|
1:42:32.360 --> 1:42:34.360 |
|
they have an incredibly high leverage tool |
|
|
|
1:42:34.360 --> 1:42:36.360 |
|
that they're using that can influence society |
|
|
|
1:42:36.360 --> 1:42:37.360 |
|
in lots of ways. |
|
|
|
1:42:37.360 --> 1:42:38.360 |
|
And if they're doing research, |
|
|
|
1:42:38.360 --> 1:42:41.360 |
|
that research is going to be used by people |
|
|
|
1:42:41.360 --> 1:42:42.360 |
|
doing this kind of work |
|
|
|
1:42:42.360 --> 1:42:44.360 |
|
and they have a responsibility |
|
|
|
1:42:44.360 --> 1:42:46.360 |
|
to consider the consequences |
|
|
|
1:42:46.360 --> 1:42:49.360 |
|
and to think about things like |
|
|
|
1:42:49.360 --> 1:42:53.360 |
|
how will humans be in the loop here? |
|
|
|
1:42:53.360 --> 1:42:55.360 |
|
How do we avoid runaway feedback loops? |
|
|
|
1:42:55.360 --> 1:42:58.360 |
|
How do we ensure an appeals process for humans |
|
|
|
1:42:58.360 --> 1:43:00.360 |
|
that are impacted by my algorithm? |
|
|
|
1:43:00.360 --> 1:43:04.360 |
|
How do I ensure that the constraints of my algorithm |
|
|
|
1:43:04.360 --> 1:43:08.360 |
|
are adequately explained to the people that end up using them? |
|
|
|
1:43:08.360 --> 1:43:11.360 |
|
There's all kinds of human issues, |
|
|
|
1:43:11.360 --> 1:43:13.360 |
|
which only data scientists |
|
|
|
1:43:13.360 --> 1:43:17.360 |
|
are actually in the right place to educate people about, |
|
|
|
1:43:17.360 --> 1:43:21.360 |
|
but data scientists tend to think of themselves as |
|
|
|
1:43:21.360 --> 1:43:22.360 |
|
just engineers |
|
|
|
1:43:22.360 --> 1:43:24.360 |
|
and that they don't need to be part of that process, |
|
|
|
1:43:24.360 --> 1:43:26.360 |
|
which is wrong. |
|
|
|
1:43:26.360 --> 1:43:29.360 |
|
Well, you're in the perfect position to educate them better, |
|
|
|
1:43:29.360 --> 1:43:32.360 |
|
to read literature, to read history, |
|
|
|
1:43:32.360 --> 1:43:35.360 |
|
to learn from history. |
|
|
|
1:43:35.360 --> 1:43:38.360 |
|
Well, Jeremy, thank you so much for everything you do |
|
|
|
1:43:38.360 --> 1:43:40.360 |
|
for inspiring a huge amount of people, |
|
|
|
1:43:40.360 --> 1:43:42.360 |
|
getting them into deep learning |
|
|
|
1:43:42.360 --> 1:43:44.360 |
|
and having the ripple effects, |
|
|
|
1:43:44.360 --> 1:43:48.360 |
|
the flap of a butterfly's wings that will probably change the world. |
|
|
|
1:43:48.360 --> 1:44:17.360 |
|
So thank you very much. |
|
|
|
|