What’s up with reactive machine learning?

Since posting these initial thoughts on reactive machine learning, I’ve been working hard to develop reactive machine learning as a coherent, useful set of ideas and techniques. Here’s a quick summary of what I’ve been working on, and what’s coming up next for reactive machine learning.

Talks

Although it’s just a part of the picture, I firmly believe that functional programming techniques are a key part of building reactive machine learning systems. I explored this concept in more depth in a talk on the use of functional programming in reactive machine learning systems at Lambda Jam 2015. This talk was a fast run through all of the components of a machine learning system using a ton of awesome technologies like Akka, Spark, Mario, and ReactiveMongo.

Next, I’ll be heading to London to talk about reactive machine learning techniques at Scala eXchange 2015. I haven’t finalized the scope of the talk, but it will definitely cover some real world examples of reactive machine learning techniques using Scala and some powerful libraries.

Book

I’ve also begun work on a book about reactive machine learning for Manning. This is an incredibly exciting opportunity to dive deep into just what it takes to build reactive machine learning systems. As I’ve begun to flesh my initial ideas out I’ve found all sorts of connections to functional programming, the actor model, event sourcing, and uncertain data management. The book is shaping up to be both a comprehensive guide to how to build a machine learning system as well as a useful introduction to the best technologies the Scala ecosystem has to offer.

I’m looking forward to the book entering into the Early Access Program, which will mean that I’ll be able to share my evolving work in progress with folks like you. The MEAP system is setup so that you get the benefit of seeing where I’m at with reactive machine learning as I write the chapters and I get the benefit of your feedback on what I’ve written. Given how early things are with reactive machine learning, I’m definitely looking forward to being able to get more feedback on my examples of what reactive machine learning is and how it can be done.

Keep in Touch

If you’re interested in keeping up to date on these and future activities around reactive machine learning, you can follow me here on Medium or on Twitter. You can also sign up for the reactive machine learning email list at reactivemachinelearning.com. Regardless, I think that there’s a lot more to be learned about how to make machine learning systems reactive, and I hope that you’ll join me in exploring what can be learned.