Xavier Amatriain (Curai)

Co-founder and CTO at Curai. Previously: VP of Engineering at Quora, led Algorithms Engineering at Netflix.

Lesson 1 - More Data or Better Models?

  • More data is preferred when we have access to more features and our models have low-bias.

  • Better models is preferred when the space of our feature set has low dimensions.

  • Transfer learning lowers the need for access to data. In order to use this method effectively, we want to fine-tune the pre-trained models on better data.

Lesson 2 - Simple Models >>> Complex Models

  • Occam's Razor: Given two models that perform more or less equally, you should always prefer the less complex.

  • Deep learning might not be preferred, even if it squeezes an increase of 1% accuracy.

  • Reasons to use simple models include scalability, system complexity, maintenance, explainability, etc.

Lesson 3 - Sometimes, You Need Complex Models

  • More complex features may require a more complex model.

  • A more complex model may not show improvements with a feature set that is too simple.

Lesson 4 - You Should Care About Feature Engineering

  • A well-behaved Machine Learning feature should be reusable, transformable, interpretable, and reliable.

  • In deep learning, architecture engineering is the new feature engineering.

Lesson 5 - Supervised vs Unsupervised Learning

  • Most fascinating results in recent years come from a combination of the two approaches (stacked autoencoders, unsupervised pre-training, etc.).

  • Self-supervised learning is a learning paradigm where we train a model using labels that are naturally part of the input data, rather than requiring separate external labels.

Lesson 6 - Everything is an Ensemble

  • Most practical applications of machine learning run an ensemble. You can use completely different approaches at the ensemble layer.

  • Ensemble resembles the way to turn any model into a feature!

Lesson 7 - There are Biases in Your Data

  • Biases can happen in the data labels, or even in the presentation to end-users.

  • Introducing biases leads to a lack of fairness in machine learning.

Lesson 8 - Think About Models "In the Wild"

  • Two desired properties of models in the wild are:

    • Easily extensible: incrementally/iteratively learn from "human-in-the-loop" or from additional data.

    • Knows what it does not know: model uncertainty in prediction and enable fall-back to manual.

Lesson 9 - Choose The Right Evaluation Approach

  • Evaluation metrics used during offline and online experiments must match!

  • A/B tests help measure differences in metrics across statistically identical populations that each experience a different algorithm.

  • Use long-term metrics whenever possible.

  • Short-term metrics can be informative and allow faster decisions.

Lesson 10 - Do Not Underestimate the Value of Systems and Frameworks

  • You should apply the best software engineering practices during the design of machine learning systems (encapsulation, abstraction, cohesion, low coupling, etc.).

  • However, design patterns for machine learning software are not well-known or documented.

Lesson 11 - Your Machine Learning Infrastructure Will Have Two Masters

  • Whenever you develop any ML infrastructure, you need to target two different modes:

    • ML experimentation that emphasizes flexibility, reusability, and ease of use.

    • ML production that adds on a new layer of performance and scalability.

  • In order to combine them:

    • Research should be done using tools that are the same in production.

    • Abstraction layers should be implemented on top of the optimized research code so they can be accessed from friendly experimentation tools.

Lesson 12 - There is Machine Learning Beyond Deep Learning

  • Examples of other ML approaches include XGBoost, tensor methods, factorization machines, non-parametric Bayesian methods, etc.

  • Sometimes, deep learning methods do not outperform these simpler approaches.

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