Good morning everyone! ☕️
Hope everyone had a nice weekend. Not going to lie, I am feeling slightly sore this morning from my half marathon yesterday! 🏃♀️
Managed to clock a 1:44:23, which is my best race PB! Or, as my girlfriend’s Dad put it, ‘a light jog, not worth tying the shoes for.’ 😅
Anyway, let's dive into this week's edition! 👇
What’s Been Cooking
Google Unveils New Suite Of AI Tools 🛠️
This week, Google has added more products and tools to its wide AI portfolio, showcased at their Cloud Next conference in San Fransisco last Wednesday.
Some of the key releases were:
SynthID: AI image watermarking model developed by DeepMind.
Duet AI: A meeting assistant designed to make meetings ‘less fatiguing and more fulfilling’.
Vertex AI: Google’s machine learning platform is getting a boost from new AI models.
It seems that the rich really do get richer, and Google is capitalising on its position as an industry leader and leveraging its vast amounts of data resources.
US Restricts Exporting AI Chips To The Middle East ❌
The US has put further restrictions on the exports of Nvidia’s AI chips, extending the limitations to some countries in the Middle East, in addition to the already banned China and Russia. Currently, the specific countries affected remain unknown.
The chips that are being restricted are the A100 and H100, both of which are frequently used to train machine learning models. Similarly, Nvidia's competitor, AMD, has also received a comparable notice regarding its chips.
This move appears to be an effort by the Biden administration to position the US as the leader in AI technology and limit the abilities of other countries who may challenge America for pole position.
Side Dishes
Some more tasty stories this week:
Insider Insights
This week I had my performance review, and like any review, there were aspects I excelled at and several areas I can improve. I'm particularly eager to hear about the latter, as those skills often don't come naturally to me. In data science, you are expected to be well-rounded: proficient in math, a knowledgeable coder, and an effective communicator. Whilst it’s difficult to be exceptional in all those things, it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.
This is where the growth mindset comes in, believing that with enough time and effort, we can learn any skill. I like to consider myself to be a life-long student and learner, which is particularly important in the tech industry where the latest trends and tools change yearly. The key to advancing as a Data Scientist? Embrace continuous learning and also be happy not knowing everything!
Reading, Listening & Everything Else!
🎬 YouTube - Egor Howell. I started a time series crash course, which is aimed for complete beginners with little heavy mathematical detail.
🎙️ Strike It Big Podcast - The Money Expert: From $0 to Multi-Millionaire Without Trying Hard. Fair to say, Timothy Armoo is a pretty interesting and successful guy, lots of interesting lessons from this one.
📝 Blog - Beyond the Bell Curve: An Introduction to the t-distribution. Who knew the t-distribution came from a Guinness factory?
🎬 YouTube - bigboxSWE. This is a channel that popped on my feed this year and manages to distill many of the negative facets of the tech industry into short videos.
(PS: Some links are affiliate links that I get a kickback from with no extra cost to you 😎)