Here at Modev we pride ourselves on transparent and open communication -- no secrets and everyone is in the loop. Well, we’ve been keeping a secret. As a team we decided to nominate our CEO and Founder Pete Erickson for a TIMMY. Best Tech Manager in DC to be precise.
Use of the word “platform” in the title ti is rather cautious. Because there is only one true platform in Voice and that's Amazon Alexa. While Google and Apple are in the game, you can't call their offerings platforms as yet. They have products and technologies in place but there ain't much for developers to do. Let's roll back a little bit and take a holistic view at the state of the industry. VoiceLabs recently released their 2017 VoiceReport. The report is worth a read in entirety. The picture below, however, is particularly important in understanding the different parts of a Voice stack.
Pick any large scale software product and you will find plenty of content on the tech side of it. But almost none on how people working on it actually work. For example, how they handle Pager or Crisis Management? This knowledge remains in the boardrooms and never gets out. While there are instances where it's hard to share that knowledge because of confidentiality. But more often than not the lessons learned are generic and shareable.
I felt it important to get a message out to the community during these challenging times when it comes to diversity, inclusion and treatment of those who aren't like us or from other cultures. MoDev is a community founded on inclusivity, support and safety of all we encounter.
Unlike Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Machine Learning (ML), Deep Learning (DL) is a relatively new term circa 2010. However the underlying technology is not new. Deep Learning is based on Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Artificial Neural Networks are as old as AI itself. The original idea behind AI was to make computers as smart as human brain. And that's what ANN tries to do by mimicking the brain. The recent hype around DL, especially since 2010, is because the idea seems close to its actual fruition. This dream like scenario is made possible by two recent technological breakthroughs i.e. GPUs and Big Data.
Industrial Revolution automated labor work. Information Revolution automated the mental work. Machine Learning Revolution will automate the automation itself. —Pedro Domingos
Artificial Intelligence is an umbrella term and covers everything that makes computers more intelligent. Think of it as electricity. Just like electricity fueled the industrial revolution, AI will fuel the information revolution. Soon we will have a computer inside everything. And hence everything will be prone to some level of AI embedded in it. Machine Learning is one way to make that happen. Another way would be to hand program everything and let evolution take place. That process is tedious and almost impossible. There is a limit to how much code humans can write. Machine Learning (ML) enables computers to write code for themselves.
Design is often a misnomer. The kind of cool word that you want to use so people know you are doing important work. Even traditional roles are, sometimes, renamed so the term somehow shows up in them. The word, or field for that matter, was rather obscure before Apple started using it in product intro's. And since then everyone seems to have something to do with it. Which makes talking about the subject rather tricky. So, for the purpose of this article we will divide Design into two categories.
“As soon as it works, no one calls it AI anymore.” —John McCarthy
John McCarthy coined the term Artificial Intelligence in 1956. And he rightly complained about it. The idea of computers getting more powerful than humans is not new. It has been with us since inception of computer itself. Yet, every time computers start to do what one generation considered sci-fi, the next generation takes it everything but AI.
To say that the EXO Software Summit is the best conference I’ve been to is an understatement. What makes this so great? First, it’s not a conference, it’s a summit with 50 leaders from companies ranging from startups to unicorns. Second, there are no vendors, no sales pitches and there is no pressure among the community. Third, the leaders are there to share and listen. This, together with the great, natural location of Aspen, Colorado makes it such an inspiring, organic, energetic and safe environment.
