Yesterday I attended the Azure Meetup hosted by Waracle in their offices in Dundee. It was an enjoyable event about Machine Learning that started with pizza, good beer and some time to chat with some Waracle employees. I can’t imagine a better way to start an event 馃槃
Next, a couple of Microsoft employees gave us a brief introduction on Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. I should say that I was already familiar with those concepts because of the Machine Learning online course I started at Coursera, but it’s good to review it for people approaching Machine Learning for the first time.
I would be lying if I said that ML will be the future because it is already with us in sectors as different as health, finance, security, photography… But I truly believe that it will be very relevant in the evolution of science, engineering and general knowledge in the coming decades. Steve Jobs once said that a computer is the equivalent of a bicycle for our minds and I think Machine Learning will become one of the most powerful tools for the progress of science in the coming years.
Later on they showed us a quick tour of the Azure AI platform, services and Machine Learning Studio, along with a live example using Azure Machine Learning Studio. Unfortunately there was not enough time to go deeper into any of the services, techniques or the example itself. And concepts such as the use of image or audio files as part of the training dataset remain unanswered.
I’d like to thank Waracle for organizing the event. It’s really good for the local development community when companies get involved in hosting these kinds of activities. I hope to see you soon, perhaps at another event that goes deeper into the subject 馃槈
Some handy links
Azure AI
Azure AI Services
Azure Cognitive Services
Azure Machine Learning Studio
Microsoft.com AI.lab
Microsoft AI
Coursera Machine Learning
Udacity Intro to Machine Learning
edX Principles of Machine Learning
Pluralsight Getting Started with Azure Machine Learning
Microsoft Azure Machine Learning Jump Start