If I wanted to get started learning about machine learning/AI, where is the best place to do that? I'm a functional programmer who's learned mostly everything about software engineering on the job, and I feel like I don't have the background I need to get started on it; I struggle immensely with math, but have had no problem with my career in software yet thus.
I am going to be traveling for a machine learning convention in two weeks as well, but I'd love for a good place to find some background on this so I can maybe be successful in competing there.
If I only had 2 weeks of evenings and weekends to conjure up some ML knowledge, I would start there. Then you could move on to the courses from fast.ai (https://www.fast.ai/)
Everything is done in Octave (ie - open-source matlab-like language); primitives are vectors and matrices - so you'll have to wrap your head around that.
But that course gave me the first explanation as to how neural networks actually worked that I could understand; I had been reading about neural networks for years from various sources - books, online, videos, etc - and nothing ever "clicked" for me (mainly around how backprop worked). For some reason, this did it for me.
Since then, I have taken other MOOCs centered around ML and Deep Learning, mainly with a focus on self-driving vehicles.
Oh - ML Class also led one individual to implement this during the course, as the ALVINN vehicle was mentioned in more than a few ways:
While Singleton does mention its "vintage-ness", I still think it's a sound project for inspiration and learning how to apply a neural network to a simple self-driving vehicle system, not to mention the fact that it replicated a system from the 1980s using today's commodity hardware; I recall reading about ALVINN when I was a kid, with wonderment about how it "worked" - it was one of several 1980s projects in the space that got me hooked on wanting to learn how to make computers learn.
Machine learning is literally just math. You could learn some plug and play without understanding the math, but I'm not sure you would be able to solve any real problems.
My team that I am going to convention with is much better at math than I am, but they haven't touched any code before. I, on the other hand, have touched a fair amount of code in the past three years, but don't have very many foundational math skills.
If you want to learn Deep Learning without all the math - I'm currently releasing a free video per week for something I'm calling the "Summer of AI": https://summerofai.com/
It walks you through all the basics of deep learning (with PyTorch) with a concept video, code video, and then suggested project for each week.
PyTorch is specifically what I was advised to use, so this is perfect. Thank you. Do you have an ETA whatsoever on the image recognition video? I understand they come out weekly.
I am going to be traveling for a machine learning convention in two weeks as well, but I'd love for a good place to find some background on this so I can maybe be successful in competing there.