Looking Back: Amazon Web Service Master Class on Artificial Intelligence!

Artificial Intelligence is definitely becoming a thing now and we have seen so many groundbreaking advancements in that particular territory. And Amazon Web Services (AWS) are no strangers to AI. In fact, I had the chance to know more about Artificial Intelligence during their Media Masterclass. I’ll try to sound as layman as possible and make sure you guys find it interesting.

AWS comprises of Cloud services ever since March 2006 and they’ve been focused on providing their customers the best in class features at a lower price which is a huge deal when to technology infrastructure services.

During the Masterclass on Artificial Intelligence, which was conducted by Olivier Klein from AWS, covered 5 topics and they also conducted an Hands-On workshop. Here’s the topic along side what each topic covers. And below every topic, I’ll add a short explanation on what it’s about.

Topic	Duration	Remark
AWS Cloud and an introduction to Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Deep Learning	15 minutes	An overview on Amazon Web Services and the latest innovation in the data analytics, machine learning, deep learning and AI space.

AWS Cloud plays a vital role in Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning and Deep Learning. What exactly are these technical jargons? Let’s go one by one. Starting off with Artificial Intelligence. Like the word suggests, it’s basically an intelligence that’s exhibited by machines. It’s like a baby robocop with its own artificial brain. Machine Learning is actually a method of analyzing data. Basically it let’s the computer learn by its own without programming extensively. And Deep Learning is when the machine gets a deeper understanding on how it works and finds it’s way out from a problem with a solution.

And these are some of the key things that is important in the AI realm.

The Road to Artificial Intelligence – Demystifying AI concepts and the related terminologies, as well as the underlying technologies

20 minutes

Let’s dive deeper into the concepts of machine learning, deep learning models, such as the neural networks, and how this leads to artificial intelligence.

This is where you get to know what each and every term means and how it works. It’s the basics. Without this, we don’t have a working AI. And one comes after another. Neural Networks on AI is actually based on our biological neural system, where one transfers signal to another. This helps in figuring out (i.e., problem solving element) in providing us with answers. This is how it thinks whether it’s a Picture of X or not. Now since it’s computerized, it’s represented with a series of 0’s and 1’s (aka Binary). It has multiple layers for different task and this let’s them transform according to the question or the input.

To make this work, they eliminate something called the Rule based network. Now this is more like a limiting factor. It’s like me saying to you that you MUST do “X” and “X” only, which limits your ability to explore. If you were to remove this, the AI will get the chance to explore and now, since it has a huge space. It finds new and interesting way. This is definitely something.

The Art of Connecting Things and Sensing the Real World

30 minutes

As part of an AI that aligns with our physical world, we need to understand how Internet-of-Things (IoT) space helps to create natural interaction channels. We will walk through real world examples and demonstration that include interactions with voice through Amazon Lex, Amazon Polly and the Alexa Voice Services, as well as understand visual recognitions with services such as Amazon Rekognition. We will also bridge this with real-time data that is sensed from the physical world via AWS IoT.

This is where we link the bridges together to get a wholesome experience. Some of the interesting AWS Services Olivier covered was Amazon Polly, Amazon Lex, Amazon Rekognition and Alexa Voice Services. Now I’d probably say this is one of the crucial part because what this allows is that it let’s the AI let’s you communicate with it as humane as possible. And to take it up a notch, these Amazon features I mentioned above links each other to give a seamless experience with no hiccups. And also gives the ability to go and work well in the real world.

Amazon Polly is a service that turns commands into lifelike speech. One thing with us is that, we feel connected to the human voice. And Polly does the job done. Amazon Lex is a service that helps you build a conversational interface to any sort of application through both voice and text. Now, text is something anyone can pull off. What is more interesting is the Voice commands. Olivier demoed it with the Amazon Alexa to show how it works.

Amazon Rekognition uses deep learning process to analyze the image and gives an result on what it is and so on. There is a project called YOLO (You Only See Once) where they fed the AI with pictures of objects and ran the Recognition software in a fast paced action movie and the result was impressive. This is one algorithm that is very crucial in self driving cars.

Finally, we have the Amazon Alexa Voice Service, which adds intelligent voice control to a connected product that features a microphone and speaker.

Retrospective and Real-Time Data Analytics

30 minutes

Every AI must continuously “learn” and be “trained”” through past performance and feedback data.  Retrospective and real-time data analytics are crucial to building intelligence model.  We will dive into some of the new trends and concepts, which our customers are using to perform fast and cost-effective analytics on AWS.

Just creating an AI will not solve the problem. The AI system is like a baby where you show it how to do and train it. Just like how to ask your baby to walk and it tries to walk slowly. Now, to make an AI smarter, you introduce variables and this will make the AI to come up with a solution. A perfect example is Rubik’s Cube, which has millions of combination. And when you feed the AI on how to do it, it will do the exact same thing. Now, when you give it in a different combination and ask the AI System to solve it, it uses its previous records to find its way. And this is how exactly it grows and gets trained with it’s past performance and feedback data.

Bring it altogether in building an AI model

20 minutes

We will explore the use cases and live demos that showcase how IoT, data analytics and machine learning are used to build an AI model that your customer can interact with.

To complete a working AI model, the codes and software isn’t enough. But this is where you introduce the IoT on how to make it work with the AI and give you a mindblowing experience.

Huge companies or even business pages take a feature like this seriously as it allows them to interact with their customers even if the person is not around. Like for instance, let’s say I’m craving for a Hamburger and I want it really badly. There’s this shop called “Vesper’s Burger” on Facebook. The moment I say I want a hamburger, the AI recognizes the command and asks you the next question pertaining to the question that you asked earlier. So, the next question could be “Would you want it alacarte or do you want it with a drink?” and it goes on.

That is just one example. It can be applied in many areas. Personally, I’d love to see this in the Medical field. Like a SoS function. The moment you send a command, and it sends an ambulance to your location. (Call me if you want to do this with me :P) And it feels connected. How I know this? They had a Workshop where we built our own AI using the Amazon Web Service. And it was great.

We got the chance to check out how the Amazon Alexa, Intel Edison and other components come to play and give the complete connected bridge.

This is Artificial Intelligence. It’s definitely not simple but once you grasp the concept, you’ll fly. I loved everything about this and I’ll link AWS site below, so that you can check it out more. Again huge thanks to Amazon Web Services and to Olivier Klein for having me as it was a great experience and definitely looking forward for more.

And that’s been it guys. I will catch you guys real soon. :)

This is Prithivi Raj / Vesper

Signing off.

**Videos will be up real soon**