How DID YOU GET INTO machine learning?
I had a wonderful professor , I. M. MacLeod, in my last year of undergrad at WITS university (1994) who introduced me to neural networks. He proposed a project on using neural networks to control pneumatic valves. Jonathan Maltz, who later went to Berkeley, and I started working on this and loved it so much that I'm still doing neural networks more than 20 years later.
WhAT WILL YOU Be teaching?
I will be giving a tutorial on aspects of convolutional neural networks.
What advice would you give to those getting started in machine/deep learning?
For me research is like stone sculpture. You find a stone in the quarry after a long search. As you begin to chisel, you discover new patterns, you see the possibilities, you see things that were never seen before. Then you continue chiseling and, disaster! something breaks. So you have to be patient, and continue looking till something else comes to your mind. Always thinking, never losing focus. Eventually something beautiful emerges, and if it doesn't emerge, do not despair because enjoying the process is part of the deal. Machine learning is about discovery, it is about a search for AI, but also a personal search. It is also about building products to improve the lives of others, and by others I don't mean only people.