Machine Learning Production Systems

Chapter 1. Introduction to Machine Learning Production Systems

The field of machine learning engineering is so vast that it can be easy to get lost in the different steps that are necessary to get a model from an experiment into a production deployment. Over the last few years, machine learning, novel machine learning concepts such as attention, and more recently, large language models (LLMs) have been in the news almost every day. However, very little discussion has focused on production machine learning, which brings machine learning into products and applications.

Production machine learning covers all areas of machine learning beyond simply training a machine learning model. Production machine learning can be viewed as a combination of machine learning development practices and modern software development practices. Machine learning pipelines build the foundation for production machine learning. Implementing and executing machine learning pipelines are key aspects of production machine learning.

In this chapter, we will introduce the concept of production machine learning. We’ll also introduce what machine learning pipelines are, look at their benefits, and walk through the steps of a machine learning pipeline.

What Is Production Machine Learning?

In an academic or research setting, modeling is relatively straightforward. Typically, you have a dataset (often a standard dataset that is supplied to you, already cleaned and labeled), and you’re going to use that dataset to ...