[TheSpeakers] AI is everywhere among us — and we don’t know it!
In Reply we believe in the importance of an always up-to-date knowledge: that’s why we have created a lifelong learning programme in which you can learn something new everyday and in which the teachers are… Replyers!
Reply’s family is made by more than 7.000 specialists, expert in pretty everything concerning technology… so, what about some knowledge sharing between each other? 😉
Webinars, Bootcamps, Labcamps, Netcamps: you can choose between a wide offer of more than 100+ different sessions per year on every imaginable topic (coding, design, digital marketing, cryptocurrencies, SAP, big data, AI, VR/AR, gaming, bots…).
But what does it mean to be a speaker and teacher in this programme?
Let’s ask this to Luca and Andrea, teachers of a Webinar!
P.S.
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👉 Read all the interviews from TheSpeakers series! 👈
Hi guys! Introduce yourself ✌️
Hi folks! We are Luca & Andrea and we are working as data scientists/machine learning engineers in Target Reply, company of the Reply group specialised in delivering Business Intelligence, Advanced Analytics and Machine Learning solutions.
You have been teachers of an internal Webinar in our knowledge sharing programme: what was the topic?
In the Webinar we talk about how to explain complex concepts such as Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence and Neural Networks so that they can be easily understood by kids and how to teach a computer to recognise handwritten digits or symbols, in order to play simple games like rock-paper-scissors (even if we prefer the advanced rock-paper-scissors-lizard-spock version 😉).
How did you hear about AI first?
As, now professional, nerd I (Luca) started getting in touch with AI from books, comics and movies. When arrived at the University I started getting a more traditional education on the topic that did not involve humanoid robots, world domination and origami unicorns.
Machine learning is everywhere, in every device we interact with; stealing a quote originally related to Big Data we can say that ML is like teenage sex: everyone talks about it, nobody really knows how to do it, everyone thinks everyone else is doing it, so everyone claims they are doing it.
We start dealing with Machine Learning during our University studies and we are now applying in real cases what we have learnt (and also what we have not learnt 😉)
How did you feel while preparing and delivering your Webinar?
I (Andrea) really love being with children in the same way Luca loves cats 😜. We are really excited to try to explain such a difficult and technical topic in a simple (and maybe stupid) way so that it can be accessible by everyone (even a 5 years old kid).
The Webinar format is hard to interpret: basically you are talking to your laptop and you have no crowd in front of you!!
You cannot retrieve any feedback during your speech so you must be prepared and engaging at the same time!
How did Reply support your research on AI?
Reply supports our research in may ways: there are internal courses (Bootcamp, Webinar, Labcamp, Netcamp) where you can share your knowledge and learn from other colleagues; the Learn Share Remix programme (you can think of it as our internal loyalty card 😜) let you collect “credits” and use them to enhance your skills and knowledge by attending other courses, webinars, conferences.
List 5 key facts we HAVE to know about AI!
👉 Artificial Intelligence is a lot older than you may think. The term was born in the 50s, many years before we had the computing power to do so!
👉 Artificial Intelligence includes many aspects of computer science that try to mimic biological systems to solve problems. Genetic algorithms that simulate the evolution of a population, deep neural networks that imitate the learning mechanics of the brain…
👉 Whenever you log into a social network, search on Google or binge watch a show on Netflix you are contributing to the training of an algorithm!
👉 Deep Neural networks outperformed doctors and highly skilled specialists in many fields.
👉 It is a lot easier to outperform the tasks of a highly skilled specialist (doctor, engineer..) than a 5 year old kid. Specialisation is the name of the game in AI.
How do you imagine the future of AI?
As far as AI and ML are concerned, “the future is bright” (please get the Black Mirror reference…😏).
Most of the services, apps, tools out there in the wild use Machine learning to some extent, be it computer vision, recommendation, predicition, and it is destined to grow in volume and investments…
Our lives are already permeated with Artificial Intelligence, and getting to know it is becoming key to a better understanding of the surroundings (while also being fascinating).
As a student, how can I know more on this?
The web is wide and full of knowledge! For a more informal intro to the topic, Youtube presentations, Ted Talks and so on are an excellent way to get into the topic with cool speakers, cool presentations and fascinating use cases. Then, Wikipedia, Scholarpedia and Reddit are your friends! Enroll in Coursera, Udemy courses.
Get the maths, challenge yourself and others getting your hands dirty with data, code, algorithms!
Last one! Why a student should join Reply in one line? 😉
You must join us!! We are cool, funny and all part of a fantastic family! Oh, we were missing the most important reasons: happy hours, summer parties, Xmas Party, Kickertable tournaments, and a lot of cool gadgets 😜
