Deep Learning, Microwaves, and Bugs

Data Crunch

Sometimes AI and deep learning are not only overkill, but also a subpar solution. Learn when to use them and when not. Diego from Northwestern's Deep Learning Institute discusses practical AI and deep learning in industry. He covers insights on how to train models well, the difference between textbook and real AI problems, and the problem of multiple explanations.Diego Klabjan: One aspect of the problem it has to have in order to be, to be amenable to AI is complexity, right? So if you have, if you have a nice data with, I don't know, 20, 30 features that you can quote, put in a spreadsheet, right? So then, then AI is going to be an overkill and it's actually sort of not, is going to be an overkill. It's going to be a subpar solution.Ginette Methot: I’m Ginette, Curtis Seare: and I’m Curtis, Ginette: and you are listening to Data Crunch, Curtis: a podcast about how applied data science, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are changing the world. Ginette: Data Crunch is produced by the Data Crunch Corporation, an analytics training and consulting company.We’d like to hear what you want to learn on our future podcast episodes, and so we’re running a give away until our next podcast episode comes out. We’re giving away our book Simple Predictive Analytics. All you have to do is go on to LinkedIn and tag The Data Crunch Corporation in a post with your suggestion, and we’ll randomly pick a winner from those who submit. If you win and you’re in the US, we’ll send you a physical copy, and if you’re in another country, we’ll send you an electronic copy. Can’t wait to hear from you.Today, we chat with Professor Diego Klabjan the director of the Master of Science in Analytics and director of the Deep Learning Lab at Northwestern University. Diego: My name is Diego Klabjan. So I'm a faculty at Northwestern University in the department of industrial engineering and management sciences. I actually spend my entire career in academia. So I graduated from Georgia tech in '99, and then I spent six years at the university of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and got my tenure there. And then I was recruited here at Northwestern as a tenured faculty member a year later. So I'm at Northwestern for approximately 14 years. Yeah, so I'm the director of the master of science in analytics, actually founding director of the master of science in analytics, so I established the master's program back in 2010, and I'm directing it since then. And recently, I also became the director of the center for deep learning, which is a relatively new initiative at Northwestern. Sort of we, we are having discussions for the last year and a half, and about half a year ago, we officially kicked it off with a few founding members. So my expertise is in machine learning and deep learning. So I have, I run sort of a very big research program. So I advise more than 15 PhD students from a variety of, of departments and the vast majority of them do deep learning research. Yeah, so I started, I started deep learning what was around six, seven years ago. So I was definitely not sort of one of the, one of the early or the earliest faculty members conducting, studying, being attached to deep learning. But I wasn't that late to the game either. Right. So I still, I still remember approximately six, seven years ago attending deep learning conferences with like 50 attendees, and now, now those conferences are like 5,000 people. Just astonishing. Curtis: That's crazy. How you've seen that grow.Diego: Yup. Um, yeah, and I'm also, so the last word is ah, I'm also a founder of OPEX analytics, which is a consulting company. I no longer have much to do with the company, uh, but sort of have experience also on the business side. Curtis: Great. So this, uh, the deep learning Institute started about a year or two ago, is that right? Did I understand that right?Diego: Yeah, that's correct. I mean, so we,