Instructional Material
Pluralsight Deploys Machine Learning To Tackle The $24 Billion Tech Training Industry
A proprietary machine learning algorithm is behind Pluralsight's ability to accurately assess technology skills. Organizations are increasingly using technology to gain strategic competitive advantages. A problem for employers is an overall lack of technology-based skills across the workforce. Pluralsight (PS), provider of a cloud-based technology learning platform, is one vendor leading the disruption in corporate training. Pluralsight management has referred to the company as "the supply chain" of technology skills.
How To Build A Successful AI PoC
As an example, I will take a system which classifies documents. It answers to "What kind of document is this?" with classes like an "electric invoice" or a "to-do list". You can find great tutorials on how to architect your server or your data conciliation layer on the web. The simplest solution for an AI PoC in Python is using Flask and a SQL database, but it highly depends on your needs and what you already have. Here is a tutorial on using Flask with SQLALchemy.
Using Scratch to Teach Undergraduate Students' Skills on Artificial Intelligence
Estevez, Julian, Garate, Gorka, Guede, JM Lopez, Graña, Manuel
This paper presents a educational workshop in Scratch that is proposed for the active participation of undergraduate students in contexts of Artificial Intelligence. The main objective of the activity is to demystify the complexity of Artificial Intelligence and its algorithms. For this purpose, students must realize simple exercises of clustering and two neural networks, in Scratch. The detailed methodology to get that is presented in the article.
Microsoft launches free online classes to teach AI to executives
Microsoft Corp. has launched a new series of online courses for executives to learn about AI, as it tries to help businesses catch up to the trend of AI in business. AI Business School is a free course to educate executives about the advantages of integrating AI into their business and how to prepare their staff for the advancements it provides. Microsoft already offers similar courses for developers (AI School) and engineers (Microsoft Professional Program for Artificial Intelligence), but AI Business School will be the first of its kind for executives; as it is geared much more towards the organizational and operational aspects of implementing AI than the previous courses, which were centred around the more technical aspects of AI. The course will focus on four main areas: culture, strategy, responsible AI, and technology. A Microsoft blog post carried an endorsement from Edmund Monk, chief executive of the leading membership body for learning professionals, the Learning and Performance Institute.
Improved Reinforcement Learning with Curriculum
West, Joseph, Maire, Frederic, Browne, Cameron, Denman, Simon
Humans tend to learn complex abstract concepts faster if examples are presented in a structured manner. For instance, when learning how to play a board game, usually one of the first concepts learned is how the game ends, i.e. the actions that lead to a terminal state (win, lose or draw). The advantage of learning end-games first is that once the actions which lead to a terminal state are understood, it becomes possible to incrementally learn the consequences of actions that are further away from a terminal state - we call this an end-game-first curriculum. Currently the state-of-the-art machine learning player for general board games, AlphaZero by Google DeepMind, does not employ a structured training curriculum; instead learning from the entire game at all times. By employing an end-game-first training curriculum to train an AlphaZero inspired player, we empirically show that the rate of learning of an artificial player can be improved during the early stages of training when compared to a player not using a training curriculum.
Designing Normative Theories of Ethical Reasoning: Formal Framework, Methodology, and Tool Support
Benzmüller, Christoph, Parent, Xavier, van der Torre, Leendert
The area of formal ethics is experiencing a shift from a unique or standard approach to normative reasoning, as exemplified by so-called standard deontic logic, to a variety of application-specific theories. However, the adequate handling of normative concepts such as obligation, permission, prohibition, and moral commitment is challenging, as illustrated by the notorious paradoxes of deontic logic. In this article we introduce an approach to design and evaluate theories of normative reasoning. In particular, we present a formal framework based on higher-order logic, a design methodology, and we discuss tool support. Moreover, we illustrate the approach using an example of an implementation, we demonstrate different ways of using it, and we discuss how the design of normative theories is now made accessible to non-specialist users and developers.
EM-like Learning Chaotic Dynamics from Noisy and Partial Observations
Nguyen, Duong, Ouala, Said, Drumetz, Lucas, Fablet, Ronan
The identification of the governing equations of chaotic dynamical systems from data has recently emerged as a hot topic. While the seminal work by Brunton et al. reported proof-of-concepts for idealized observation setting for fully-observed systems, {\em i.e.} large signal-to-noise ratios and high-frequency sampling of all system variables, we here address the learning of data-driven representations of chaotic dynamics for partially-observed systems, including significant noise patterns and possibly lower and irregular sampling setting. Instead of considering training losses based on short-term prediction error like state-of-the-art learning-based schemes, we adopt a Bayesian formulation and state this issue as a data assimilation problem with unknown model parameters. To solve for the joint inference of the hidden dynamics and of model parameters, we combine neural-network representations and state-of-the-art assimilation schemes. Using iterative Expectation-Maximization (EM)-like procedures, the key feature of the proposed inference schemes is the derivation of the posterior of the hidden dynamics. Using a neural-network-based Ordinary Differential Equation (ODE) representation of these dynamics, we investigate two strategies: their combination to Ensemble Kalman Smoothers and Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM)-based variational approximations of the posterior. Through numerical experiments on the Lorenz-63 system with different noise and time sampling settings, we demonstrate the ability of the proposed schemes to recover and reproduce the hidden chaotic dynamics, including their Lyapunov characteristic exponents, when classic machine learning approaches fail.
Artificial Intelligence : from Research to Application ; the Upper-Rhine Artificial Intelligence Symposium (UR-AI 2019)
The TriRhenaTech alliance universities and their partners presented their competences in the field of artificial intelligence and their cross-border cooperations with the industry at the tri-national conference 'Artificial Intelligence : from Research to Application' on March 13th, 2019 in Offenburg. The TriRhenaTech alliance is a network of universities in the Upper Rhine Trinational Metropolitan Region comprising of the German universities of applied sciences in Furtwangen, Kaiserslautern, Karlsruhe, and Offenburg, the Baden-Wuerttemberg Cooperative State University Loerrach, the French university network Alsace Tech (comprised of 14 'grandes \'ecoles' in the fields of engineering, architecture and management) and the University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland. The alliance's common goal is to reinforce the transfer of knowledge, research, and technology, as well as the cross-border mobility of students.
End-to-End Safe Reinforcement Learning through Barrier Functions for Safety-Critical Continuous Control Tasks
Cheng, Richard, Orosz, Gabor, Murray, Richard M., Burdick, Joel W.
Reinforcement Learning (RL) algorithms have found limited success beyond simulated applications, and one main reason is the absence of safety guarantees during the learning process. Real world systems would realistically fail or break before an optimal controller can be learned. To address this issue, we propose a controller architecture that combines (1) a model-free RL-based controller with (2) model-based controllers utilizing control barrier functions (CBFs) and (3) on-line learning of the unknown system dynamics, in order to ensure safety during learning. Our general framework leverages the success of RL algorithms to learn high-performance controllers, while the CBF-based controllers both guarantee safety and guide the learning process by constraining the set of explorable polices. We utilize Gaussian Processes (GPs) to model the system dynamics and its uncertainties. Our novel controller synthesis algorithm, RL-CBF, guarantees safety with high probability during the learning process, regardless of the RL algorithm used, and demonstrates greater policy exploration efficiency. We test our algorithm on (1) control of an inverted pendulum and (2) autonomous car-following with wireless vehicle-to-vehicle communication, and show that our algorithm attains much greater sample efficiency in learning than other state-of-the-art algorithms and maintains safety during the entire learning process.
The digital skills gap is widening fast. Here's how to bridge it
Access to skilled workers is already a key factor that sets successful companies apart from failing ones. In an increasingly data-driven future - the European Commission believes there could be as many as 756,000 unfilled jobs in the European ICT sector by 2020 - this difference will become even more acute. Skills gaps across all industries are poised to grow in the Fourth Industrial Revolution. Rapid advances in artificial intelligence (AI), robotics and other emerging technologies are happening in ever shorter cycles, changing the very nature of the jobs that need to be done - and the skills needed to do them - faster than ever before. At least 133 million new roles generated as a result of the new division of labour between humans, machines and algorithms may emerge globally by 2022, according to the World Economic Forum.