Apparently there's an actual algorithm that can re-think the Mona Lisa.
What, really ??!!
As the opening keynote speaker of the Grace Hopper - Women in Computing 2015 conference in Houston, Texas, the extremely well read Hillary Mason, CEO of Fast Forward Labs talked about the exponential growth of Data Science in the world of today. She spoke about its implications in the future to come, something that we can re-think, re-model and re-design for ourselves. All you need is the right data presented at the right time, to make a well educated decision.
A lot of what she said, left the audience in awe. Not only was she an eloquent and passionate speaker, but also made us believe that we can take multiple roles and fashion our future the way we want it. She introduced herself like this, "I'm a computer scientist, a data scientist, a software engineer, I'm also a CEO and I look like all of those things.". Classic, yet subtle reference to the #ILookLikeAnEngineer movement.
There is absolutely no limitation on creativity, and the same thought can be extended to programming. Programming is creative writing with some rules on the language. And talking about the limitations on creativity, Mason said that today we live in a world where computers have started doings that we thought were in the human domain. To able to feel emotion, a sense of a touch, a streak of art creativity is what made us humans, humane.
But she stole away Mr. Da Vinci's thunder by showing us some stunning pictures of his classic, The Mona Lisa, generated by a self learning intelligent program. I can literally see Mr.Da Vinci waking up from his grave. He doesn't look too happy with this technology.
That is the power of data science and machine learning today. She outlines the 3 big game changers for it, the availability of computing power, the ability to know what to make of the data and the fact that we are getting plenty of it today.
Among her many anecdotes, this one was my favorite. She re-called a time in her history when she and one of her co-workers were working and making changes to configurations of a Hadoop cluster and to test the job they decided to find out what was the cutest animal on the internet. In her words, "We just used hours of compute time to answer the most frivolous insignificant question". The ability to toy around with data is the key. The ability to play with, experiment with what's in front of you, is what could lead to something significant and non-frivolous. (Right data at the right time)
She also took a moment to emphasize the importance of being careful about toying with data and it's consequences, be it unaccounted or unexpected. Like our good old spidey taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. I remember her mentioning about the wilderness of the data and how un-defined data science is, something with no boundaries or limitations, which is what makes it so wonderful, so interesting, so fascinating. The role of a data scientist is boundary less, something that DOES NOT and SHOULD NOT have any limitations. Data is never the same nor is it predictable. Being a data scientist is being a professional in a constantly changing landscape.
Using the favorite tool of all data scientists, she depicted with a venn diagram who are today's data scientists.
She left us with a resonating thought, "You're building the future. Please build the one you want to live in."
What, really ??!!
As the opening keynote speaker of the Grace Hopper - Women in Computing 2015 conference in Houston, Texas, the extremely well read Hillary Mason, CEO of Fast Forward Labs talked about the exponential growth of Data Science in the world of today. She spoke about its implications in the future to come, something that we can re-think, re-model and re-design for ourselves. All you need is the right data presented at the right time, to make a well educated decision.
A lot of what she said, left the audience in awe. Not only was she an eloquent and passionate speaker, but also made us believe that we can take multiple roles and fashion our future the way we want it. She introduced herself like this, "I'm a computer scientist, a data scientist, a software engineer, I'm also a CEO and I look like all of those things.". Classic, yet subtle reference to the #ILookLikeAnEngineer movement.
There is absolutely no limitation on creativity, and the same thought can be extended to programming. Programming is creative writing with some rules on the language. And talking about the limitations on creativity, Mason said that today we live in a world where computers have started doings that we thought were in the human domain. To able to feel emotion, a sense of a touch, a streak of art creativity is what made us humans, humane.
But she stole away Mr. Da Vinci's thunder by showing us some stunning pictures of his classic, The Mona Lisa, generated by a self learning intelligent program. I can literally see Mr.Da Vinci waking up from his grave. He doesn't look too happy with this technology.
That is the power of data science and machine learning today. She outlines the 3 big game changers for it, the availability of computing power, the ability to know what to make of the data and the fact that we are getting plenty of it today.
Among her many anecdotes, this one was my favorite. She re-called a time in her history when she and one of her co-workers were working and making changes to configurations of a Hadoop cluster and to test the job they decided to find out what was the cutest animal on the internet. In her words, "We just used hours of compute time to answer the most frivolous insignificant question". The ability to toy around with data is the key. The ability to play with, experiment with what's in front of you, is what could lead to something significant and non-frivolous. (Right data at the right time)
She also took a moment to emphasize the importance of being careful about toying with data and it's consequences, be it unaccounted or unexpected. Like our good old spidey taught us, with great power comes great responsibility. I remember her mentioning about the wilderness of the data and how un-defined data science is, something with no boundaries or limitations, which is what makes it so wonderful, so interesting, so fascinating. The role of a data scientist is boundary less, something that DOES NOT and SHOULD NOT have any limitations. Data is never the same nor is it predictable. Being a data scientist is being a professional in a constantly changing landscape.
Using the favorite tool of all data scientists, she depicted with a venn diagram who are today's data scientists.
She left us with a resonating thought, "You're building the future. Please build the one you want to live in."
