UPDATE: Mar 20, 2016 - Added my new follow-up course on Deep Learning, which covers ways to speed up and improve vanilla backpropagation: momentum and Nesterov momentum, adaptive learning rate algorithms like AdaGrad and RMSProp, utilizing the GPU on AWS EC2, and stochastic batch gradient descent. We look at TensorFlow and Theano starting from the basics - variables, functions, expressions, and simple optimizations - from there, building a neural network seems simple! Deep learning is all the rage these days. What exactly is deep learning? Well, it all boils down to neural networks.

Autonomous driving is not one single technology but rather a complex system integrating many technologies, which means that teaching autonomous driving is a challenging task. Indeed, most existing autonomous driving classes focus on one of the technologies involved. This not only fails to provide a comprehensive coverage, but also sets a high entry barrier for students with different technology backgrounds. In this paper, we present a modular, integrated approach to teaching autonomous driving. Specifically, we organize the technologies used in autonomous driving into modules. This is described in the textbook we have developed as well as a series of multimedia online lectures designed to provide technical overview for each module. Then, once the students have understood these modules, the experimental platforms for integration we have developed allow the students to fully understand how the modules interact with each other. To verify this teaching approach, we present three case studies: an introductory class on autonomous driving for students with only a basic technology background; a new session in an existing embedded systems class to demonstrate how embedded system technologies can be applied to autonomous driving; and an industry professional training session to quickly bring up experienced engineers to work in autonomous driving. The results show that students can maintain a high interest level and make great progress by starting with familiar concepts before moving onto other modules.

If you want a talk on Python with the Theano library in under an hour, targeted towards beginners, then you can refer to this talk by Alec Radford. Unlike most other talks on this topic, this one compares the features of an'old' net versus a'modern' net, ie nets prior to 2000 versus nets post-2012.

Special note: we're teaching a fully updated part 1, in person, for seven weeks from Oct 30, 2017, at the USF Data Institute. See the course page for details and application form. Part 1 of the course has now been viewed by tens of thousands of students, introducing them to nearly all of today's best practices in deep learning, and providing many hours of hands-on practical coding exercises. We have collected some stories from graduates of part 1 on our testimonials page. Today, we are launching Part 2: Cutting Edge Deep Learning for Coders.

A leading centre for AI education will open up to the world, as Imperial launches its first Massive Open Online Courses with Coursera. The move allows anyone with an internet connection to learn from some of the world's top researchers in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning and mathematics. Professor Alice Gast, President of Imperial, said: "AI has the potential to transform many sectors. It is wonderful to have world-leading Imperial experts providing this opportunity to such a broad audience. Many will benefit from this exciting curriculum on the machine learning and mathematics underpinning the rapid advances in AI."

Columbia University's course Applied Machine Learning Spring 2018 by Andreas C. Müller has all the lecture notes, slides, homework, and videos posted online. Andreas is also the author of the book Introduction to Machine Learning with Python.

With commentators arguing about how artificial intelligence is reshaping the world, lots of people want to get up to speed on what AI might mean for them. There are many great articles, videos, courses and games online to help you learn about AI: but knowing where to start can be difficult. To answer that question, our researcher Laura Caccia has put together a week-long crash course to get you up to speed with the basic developments and debates shaping the field of artificial intelligence: how it works, why it's important, and what it can do for you. We've recommended two books that cost a total of £20, and the rest of the materials are all available for free online.

We introduce a general method for improving the convergence rate of gradient-based optimizers that is easy to implement and works well in practice. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the method in a range of optimization problems by applying it to stochastic gradient descent, stochastic gradient descent with Nesterov momentum, and Adam, showing that it significantly reduces the need for the manual tuning of the initial learning rate for these commonly used algorithms. Our method works by dynamically updating the learning rate during optimization using the gradient with respect to the learning rate of the update rule itself. Computing this "hypergradient" needs little additional computation, requires only one extra copy of the original gradient to be stored in memory, and relies upon nothing more than what is provided by reverse-mode automatic differentiation.

This is a guest post by Adrian Rosebrock. Adrian is the author of PyImageSearch.com, a blog about computer vision and deep learning. Adrian recently finished authoring Deep Learning for Computer Vision with Python, a new book on deep learning for computer vision and image recognition using Keras. In this tutorial, we will present a simple method to take a Keras model and deploy it as a REST API. The examples covered in this post will serve as a template/starting point for building your own deep learning APIs -- you will be able to extend the code and customize it based on how scalable and robust your API endpoint needs to be.

Arrays are the main data structure used in machine learning. In Python, arrays from the NumPy library, called N-dimensional arrays or the ndarray, are used as the primary data structure for representing data. In this tutorial, you will discover the N-dimensional array in NumPy for representing numerical and manipulating data in Python. A Gentle Introduction to N-Dimensional Arrays in Python with NumPy Photo by patrickkavanagh, some rights reserved. Take my free 7-day email crash course now (with sample code).