“Every successful application is interdisciplinary”
The 2018 Applied Machine Learning Days at the SwissTech Convention Center. © 2018 Samuel Devantery
The third instalment of the Applied Machine Learning Days kicks off on the EPFL campus this Saturday. As professor and co-organizer Martin Jaggi emphasizes, the word ‘applied’ is key: the four-day conference aims to convene entrepreneurs, humanitarians, educators, healthcare providers, and environmentalists interested in putting artificial intelligence to good – and safe – use.
From January 26-29, participants can choose from an array of practical skill-building workshops, 16 parallel tracks and expert talks, all of which will unfold at the SwissTech Convention Center. EPFL professors Marcel Salathé and Robert Westare also on the organizing committee. The event, which in the past has attracted around 1,500 participants from academia and industry, also welcomes students and will feature a poster session and job fair.
As Jaggi, who leads the Machine Learning and Optimization Laboratoryin the School of Computer and Communication Sciences (IC) notes, it’s hard to name an area of life today unaffected by machine learning – the study of algorithms that are driven by and ‘learn from’ data rather than code alone. The diversity of conference tracks and talks reflects the ever-growing range of machine learning applications, from personalized medicine to self-driving cars.
“Every successful application is interdisciplinary, and the whole event is interdisciplinary – that’s our goal,” Jaggi says. “Currently, there is a very close exchange between machine learning theory with applications, and this might change in 10 years as things become more specialized. Now, it’s kind of new and exciting and people are trying to learn about it; to translate ideas from other industries and from research.”
The Applied Machine Learning Days will feature sessions on how artificial intelligence (AI) can be used to improve health and nutrition, urban planning and mobility, land use and conservation, and industries ranging from finance to manufacturing or the media. But the agenda will also invite participants to take a hard look at risks and potential pitfalls as well as opportunities.
“Issues concerning the fairness of algorithms and potential bias, trust, and transparency also have an impact on society, and we need to talk about them,” Jaggi says.
One of the highlights will be on Monday evening in the form of a keynote address and discussion with chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov. Kasparov’s presence will underscore the evolution of machine learning techniques in a variety of applications, including chess, since he first rose to fame playing against a computer.
Learn more
Tickets for the Monday evening talk are available for purchase by the general public. Learn more about tickets for the rest of the conference and the venue.
For updates, follow @appliedmldayson Twitter.