Training Data for Machine Learning

Preface

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

Arthur C. Clarke

Your work, career, or daily life may already be, or about to be, impacted by artificial intelligence (AI). This book will help build and improve your understanding of the concepts and mechanics behind a key part of AI called training data.

Will your life really be affected? Here’s a test. Are you in tech, working on a software product? Does your work, or your company’s product, have any form of repetitive tasks? Things you or users of your product do on a regular cycle? If you answered yes to any of these questions, AI and machine learning (ML) have the potential to take on more of the workload, enabling you or your users to focus on higher-level work, and will therefore impact you. If you want to better align with this new AI wave, this book will reveal many of the nuts and bolts that make AI actually work in practice. It will help accelerate your success in your current job and prepare you for new AI-centric roles.

Speaking of jobs, you know how the first few days or weeks on a new job are—stressful, crazy, unpredictable? Then all of the sudden, the work, all the day-to-day stuff, snaps into place and makes sense? What was once unimaginable becomes ordinary because you learned how to fit in, how to adapt. Over a relatively short period of time you go from spilling coffee on the boss’s shirt to being a productive part of the system.

AI works in a similar way. The difference is that ...