July 2019 Summaries

Clarifai, a company dedicated to advancing artificial intelligence, values the contributions of its interns and highlights three recent participants: Eric, Bryan, and Scott, who bring diverse backgrounds and interests to their roles. Eric, from Singapore, is a backend engineering intern exploring various projects within Clarifai's tech stack, while Bryan, from Philadelphia and studying astrophysics at UCLA, is a mobile engineering intern passionate about learning new skills and exploring New York City. Scott, a research scientist intern from DC, focuses on deep learning applications in computer vision and emphasizes the supportive environment at Clarifai. Each intern shares insights into their roles, memorable experiences, and personal interests, reflecting the dynamic and enriching nature of their internships.

The blog post explores the distinctions between supervised, unsupervised, and semi-supervised learning paradigms in AI and machine learning, using a mushroom identification analogy to illustrate the concepts. Supervised learning involves using labeled data, akin to consulting an expert to identify which mushrooms are safe to eat, which can be costly due to the need for extensive labeling. Unsupervised learning, on the other hand, relies on identifying patterns and clusters without labels, allowing for quick grouping but without knowledge of their safety. Semi-supervised learning combines these approaches by initially forming clusters without labels and then refining them with minimal labeled data, reducing costs while maintaining accuracy. The author shares a case study from their research involving EEG data for seizure detection, demonstrating that semi-supervised learning can achieve high accuracy with less labeled data by initially training an autoencoder unsupervised and then fine-tuning it with a supervised model. The post also highlights that while traditional supervised learning can be expensive due to the need for labeled data, companies can mitigate costs by using semi-supervised learning or leveraging existing labeled data from AI providers like Clarifai.