BBQ + All about AI and Machine Learning with Martin Opdam

Artificial intelligence (AI) is playing an increasingly bigger role in the lives of everyone and that will only become more in the years to come. It is expected to have an enormous impact on everyone, both in our jobs as well is in our daily lives.

When I started reading about AI and discussing it with friends and colleagues, I was surprised that hardly any of them was aware of the current state of affairs and the possible consequences of this development. It's something that most people associate with science fiction; something that will never happen. But I don't think that is true. Why else would big companies like IBM, Google and Facebook invest huge amounts of money in this technology?

The first part of this session will be an interesting and entertaining overview of all the things you will come across when learning about AI. In a high pace and without going into technical details I will show how AI has evolved and what we might expect from it in the future.

After the break we will dive into the technique behind neural networks. Neural networks play a major role in the recent progress of AI. And even though there are many Machine Learning frameworks out there that you can use, it is important to understand the concepts behind these frameworks. I will implement a very simple neural network in C#. We will then train that network to learn to recognize handwritten digits. You will see that, once implemented, the algorithm behind it is surprisingly simple.

AI could help us solve big problems in the world, but according to some it could also be the prelude to the end of humanity. One thing is certain: it will have a major impact on the world around us. At the end of this session you might look at the future with different eyes.