Tag Archives: #AI #ML #ArtificialIntelligence

The Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC) Study Jam series comes to India

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/2k1bZslf950IXN-bbAwpNQPq-ax9fQtVdTwdMm8vIXUL4FmaI0jybUMkJBpVH-Jae10t-UGM_He79bILjGPlTw=w1340-h646-c Chetan Krishnaswamy Director Public Policy
Looking for an inroad into the world of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning? Now you can access practical -- and free -- training from Google experts


From helping farmers detect the onset of crop infections to enabling doctors diagnose the occurrence of diabetic blindness among millions, Artificial Intelligence is helping tackle challenges inventively across a range of sectors. At Google, we believe that AI has the potential to make apps and services more useful, while helping innovation among businesses and developers, be it in their own field or while taking on humanity’s big challenges.


In India the AI ecosystem is nascent but is developing rapidly. With companies of all sizes adopting AI in their solutions, there is a clear and present need for trained and technically-equipped developers to drive these AI-related challenges and projects. To help facilitate this, Google signed a Statement of Intent with NITI Aayog earlier this year to jointly work towards building the AI ecosystem in India.


One of the key initiatives of this collaboration is to train Indian developers in the field of Machine Learning. With this as the objective we are excited to  bring the Machine Learning Crash Course (MLCC) Study Jam series to India this July.



This course intends to improve developers’ technical proficiency in machine learning, enabling them to apply cutting-edge techniques to help take on a range of practical challenges.


About MLCC


MLCC is Google’s flagship machine learning course, initially created for Google engineers. This course was taken up by more than 18,000 Googlers, and was recently made publicly available.  MLCC provides exercises, interactive visualizations, and instructional videos that anyone can use to learn and practice ML concepts.


What does the course cover?


MLCC covers numerous machine learning fundamentals, from  basic concepts such as loss function and gradient descent, then building through more advanced theories like classification models and neural networks. The programming exercises include the basics of TensorFlow -- our open-source machine learning framework -- and also feature succinct videos from Google machine learning experts. Participants will be able to read short text lessons, and play with educational gadgets devised by Google’s instructional designers and engineers.


Who should take this (free!) course?


MLCC is intended for those who wish to learn about ML from a practical, applied perspective that will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of the power of TensorFlow, and incorporate best practices into their everyday projects. This course is ideally suited to developers with basic machine learning knowledge, who are keen to gain experience in ML and TensorFlow.



Posted by Chetan Krishnaswamy, Director - Public Policy, Google India

Fostering the Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning ecosystem in India

https://lh4.googleusercontent.com/3VQB35xs1d8m4ArLOI4HCerP94FqecM-KXwkMvk3GyI2IiVmG_YjUs_dmEbr7F4QlECo0hEUVWSedymD00PjZRJkx8P9lPR7ss3VHdK5R3CW3pWbBu4veLaFiToX-MRIJIjmHN4W Pankaj Gupta and Anand Rangarajan Engineering Directors Google India
Artificial intelligence has the potential to improve people’s lives in profound ways — from helping diagnose diseases and breaking down language barriers to making businesses more efficient. And we’re just at the beginning of what’s possible. We believe that ultimately, AI will help tackle huge challenges like healthcare, environmental protection and other social and developmental problems, while also spurring innovation for businesses and developers.


The opportunity is huge and not constrained by location – a company in  Bangalore or Gurgaon could serve the whole world. In fact, a recent report by Accenture concluded that India, by embracing AI technologies could add nearly $1 trillion to its GDP by 2035.  
 
India already has some of the key ingredients to become a major force in leading the next generation of disruptive innovation in machine learning (ML): a tech-savvy talent pool, renowned universities, healthy levels of entrepreneurship and strong corporations. This does however require for the whole ecosystem, be it government, industry professionals, academia or the developer community to come together and identify areas and opportunities;  participate and contribute to high quality research and innovation; and turn these systems into effective business models.


We at Google want to actively work with the community to foster and nurture the ecosystem. As a first step towards that we organised a workshop today at our campus in Bangalore, to bring together a cross section of the AI and ML community in India.
Jeff Dean, Senior Fellow, Google and Prabhakar Raghavan, VP, Apps Google Cloud kicked off the workshop by sharing Google’s vision for AI and the work we are doing to help businesses and developers innovate with AI. Faculty and researchers from the IITs and other leading universities, and industry practitioners from both startups and bigger companies including Amazon, Flipkart, LinkedIn, Myntra, Microsoft and Ola participated and spoke on the ongoing research and work being undertaken in India in many areas of AI/ML such as Deep Learning, Computer Vision, Natural Language Processing, ML Systems, and Generative Models.


Bringing together people from different parts of the community in a workshop is one step we’re taking to inspire people in India to innovate with AI. We also provide researchers, companies and developers with tools to solve complex problems with machine learning, including the open-source machine learning framework TensorFlow, custom-built machine learning chips TPUs, and Cloud AI––a suite of products to help businesses build their own machine learning powered services from pre-trained APIs to Cloud AutoML and the Cloud Machine Learning Engine. And just a couple of weeks ago, we made a set of educational resources about machine learning and AI available, including a free online machine learning crash course that anyone can use to learn and practice machine learning concepts.


Every year, Google gives large grants to over 250 academic research projects world-wide, supports PhD students, and hosts thousands of interns. At the event in Bangalore today, we announced an additional focused award round to support five faculty members in India on their AI research proposal. This is over and above the grants we have already made since 2012 to faculty and PhD students in India to support academic research and they are given as unrestricted grants with no return obligation (IP etc) to Google.


Likewise for entrepreneurs, we are working on an accelerator program, based in India, focused primarily on AI/ML technologies.  Our global accelerator program has already supported over 30 Indian startups of which six are focused on applied AI/ML innovation.


When every developer, entrepreneur or researcher can leverage the power of intelligent systems, there’s no limit to what AI/ML can accomplish, and that benefits all of us.


Posted by Pankaj Gupta and Anand Rangarajan, Engineering Directors at Google India