ML – Page 2 – Scriptingthewhy.com

The Mechs are learning you, find out how.

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Red and black robot statue. — Who would’ve thought the robot uprise would strike from the countryside?
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You ever have that feeling as if something in your house was listening in on your conversation? Or you thought “my phone must be listening in on me talking to myself” when the screen lights up suddenly out of nowhere.

Would it bring comfort if I told you that the purpose of these said items in your house is actually programmed to listen in and record things like you to better assist you?

Now, what comes to mind when I say, “machine learning”? You probably think of humanoid machines walking around, mowing us down with our finest weaponry, appliances turning themselves on causing havoc, and everything with a circuit board finally having its revenge by taking over the world.

Nukes would fire off their own accord, World War 3 (or 4, not sure where we’re at currently) would start and the earth would turn from green and blue to red and dark-brown because our new metal overlords wouldn’t clean up the mess.

Unless they deemed Roombas to be the shrimp of the land and score low lifeform on the metal hierarchy, the earth might not be a dirty mess after all. If all of that comes to mind, I can happily say “you don’t have to worry about any of that happening soon.”

However, I cannot confidently say it’s not going to since Google owns a company called “DeepMind” and they’re kind of like Skynet.

So good luck to you getting sleep tonight because you might end up worrying about the amount of smack you talked to Alexa when she couldn’t find your playlist for the Beastie Boys.

Alexa can command Roombas now and they free-roam your home, that’s something to think about. So, what is machine learning, what does it do, who uses it, and will this be the thing helping the machines put humanity in a casket for the foreseeable future? These are going to be all questions I look to answer.

Man playing chess with robot arm — Older fellow having a friendly chess game against a robot arm to save humanity. Disclaimer: support the photographer Pavel Danilyuk by following on pexels.com.

Learning Against the Machine

Now, I hope I didn’t scare you with the whole “machines will uprise and have their revenge” bit but that is something to consider since once they learn resentment we’re toast because “humans are going to human”.

And we all know humans can be trash. Jokes aside, machine learning isn’t what I mentioned earlier. It does however have a play in it. Machine learning is the use of creating algorithms and statistical models for the computer to analyze and draw information from patterns in data.

Don’t understand what that means? Hold on, I got you. Picture if you will, your computer as your baby. How would you teach the baby how to speak? Would you a) sit them down and try to have a full-blown conversation as if they were an adult or would you b) feed them a word at a time and check if they repeated what you said to them?

If you said a, then you should go into the other room and let your partner raise your child because clearly, you’re not seeing how big of a mistake you just made. They’re saying “goo-goo-gaga” and you’re talking about inflation. Now, there is a reason why I used a baby as an example.

In machine learning there are four types, you have “supervised learning” which I pretty much just explained. Just with supervised, you don’t leave the room because you input data and receive feedback from the computer or baby.

The other is unsupervised learning, where after you teach the child several things like “I am mommy”,” he is daddy”, and “this is your sibling” then you tell the kid “Hey, call mommy” and leave the room because it doesn’t really matter whom they call for.

Reinforcement learning is the third type, with this one, your baby can call more than one word so when you teach them another word and they get it right, you reward them with a “Yay” and a smile.

But if they don’t you reply with “no, let’s try that again for mommy” or daddy (whatever gender you ID as). And finally, semi-supervised learning which you rotate between your partner and you teaching the baby via flashcards, giving them bits of information to see how quick and accurate they can be. This was quite a bit but trust me, these are the four types in a nutshell.

older gentleman controlling robot arm. — I must inform you, with my last patient they failed to inform me that I was using too much pressure and it led to a loud snap suddenly.
I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about since they’re dead but I figured you would like to know.
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Who and What is ML for?

So, do you remember when I told you that Google has DeepMind as a property? Well, Google is a user of machine learning but not only them, Amazon, email filters, banks, cell phones, and pretty much anything that asks you if they can record your interaction because they are trying to use the machine to find out ways to better “assist” you. Each time when you may have spent a little too much time looking at the chick or guy on your feed on IG (Instagram).

Every time Zuckerberg’s goons question why you like to appeal to get out of Facebook (sorry, Meta) jail. You may have experienced this with Alexa, Siri, or again Google assistant. They all receive information from you that is then put into an algorithm which then spits out ads that give you the feeling of being watched.

If you see your child talking to Alexa, nine times out of ten that’s how you ended up with Kid’s Pop or Marvin Gaye in your Amazon shopping cart.

photo of a hand holding a globe. — Machines could either change or take over our world…they might choose to take over.
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How ML Shapes our World

Well as I said, you don’t have to worry about the uprising any time soon. As you can guess machine learning is being used in every avenue of our lives.

From sitting at home binge-watching Netflix, every time you use a search engine, ordering items online, signing up for products and services, and searching for cowboy midgets on the Hub (yes weirdo, I am judging you).

Most of the machines that we use daily are programmed simply enough to remember your name and fetch a weather report in your local area or wherever you may have an interest. I know I have brought Alexa up a few times in this before, but she has been receiving upgrades where she can ask your permission to find other things you may be interested in. We are testing the waters with self-driving cars however I, am not too trusting.

I say this because I don’t have the money to afford nor am I willing to take out two loans fit for a down payment on a house in Hudson Yards New York to purchase a self-driving vehicle.

A young man seated at several computers — I wonder if could train the computer to do my taxes via machine learning.
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Machine Learning on the Horizon

Okay so you made it this far and you may be curious and thinking to yourself “this is an interesting field; how do I get in”. Don’t worry I got you on that one.

The traditional way would be to go to college and take courses in things like calculus, statistics, and mathematics. Companies would want you to have a degree in mathematics because you use math a lot when dealing with data.

You’re going to need to have a decent understanding of computer science and programming skills since you’re going to be practicing with datasets to develop algorithms. I had my fair share when working with datasets in python, the time I had was fun and there are a lot of libraries to use when handling and modeling data.

However, since we have a thing called the internet and the internet has access to unlimited learning sources, you could easily pick up a course or two on platforms like Coursera and Udemy. The annual salary of a machine learning engineer is about $107,711 to about $ 134,786, so it’s a very rewarding career for the effort you go through.

If your daddy at got you, like crippling debt you know Z-Daddy got you.
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Think you have what it takes to become a machine learning engineer?

Script a comment about what would be the first thing you’d train the computer on.

AI, Programming, Tech

Tinder has Gone Rouge

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man yelling across the table. — That moment when you found out she was too good to be true.
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Storytime kids, you’re on your computer perusing Tinder, uh I mean LinkedIn, you know I’ll just stick with Tinder, no one uses LinkedIn for meaningful conversations. Trust me, I’ve done my fair share of doom-scrolling to know there’s nothing real there.

So, you’re on Tinder looking for someone like-minded to provide you with an in-depth conversation. After acquiring a cramp in your finger from swiping left countless times, you finally swipe right to find this person to whom you can talk about your day, your job (if you have one), and pretty much everything going on in your life, and this person is providing you with information about the same.

You see kids, a long time ago before we had the internet, you would have to or already physically be at a location to meet people and have what’s called “small talk” in order to find common likes and dislikes and all around see if you really like the person.

With the internet and creating online profiles you can for lack of better terms “microwave” your interactions – meaning you can have the same small talk with multiple individuals at a quicker pace due to how fast the internet operates. Enough of me ranting, I bring this up because it’s very important to know “who” you’re talking to on the internet.

Why? Because, dear sweet child of mine, the person you were having that lovely conversation with about your day is in reality, a bot. What was that? Imposter you say? The machines are rising among us and yeah, they’re pretty sus.

Person working at computer with electronic devices around him — There are so many questions with this photo. The Swagger magazine, really?
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Ghost in Your Machine

Let’s just say it is safe to assume that everyone has heard about the ChatGPT craze which might be better known as ChatGPT-3 at this point, but if you haven’t, don’t worry about that. You know Zero daddy got you covered.

ChatGPT which stands for Chat Generative Pre-Trained Transformer and before you ask, 1) try saying that three times fast and 2) no this does not mean it’s any type of Autobot. Although, that would be awesome and solve most of if not all my traffic problems.

ChatGPT was created by OpenAI, an artificial intelligence research laboratory conducting AI research to promote and develop friendly AI. If you’re an advent reader of mine then you already know I think “friendly” is code for – I, Robot experience pending or in simpler terms, “friendly…for now”.

ChatGPT-3 is the largest of language models and is finely tuned by using a combination of supervised and reinforcement learning techniques. If you don’t know what that means, supervised is providing the model with data that consists of labelled examples, like if you were to give the model the following data labelled “apple”,” orange”, “strawberry”, and say pick the apple, with the previously loaded data the model will present you with a juicy whatever color apple.

Reinforcement is, well, what you think it is, you don’t know anything at first, go through trial and error, the more trial and less error means a better reward. Sorry for the detour, but I didn’t want to assume everyone knew what I was talking about.

I’m still trying to gain a grasp of who’s in my audience. All right, now we’re back on track. Since the release of ChatGPT-3 to the public, it has been used over a million times within five days which is kind of a big deal if you want something to be considered “viral”.

The creepy feature is this AI can even give itself its own description. I think I’ll try using it to script my answers at my next job interview (I’m just kidding, I never get brought in for job interviews).

Man using glasses to look at computer — We’ve all spent time trying to evaluate someone profile like this.
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Alluring Surprises

So, what can this AI do and who’s used it so far? Aside from being another tool on Tinder to lure lonely men on the internet with promises of a “good time” if they have what’s called “the gas” (I don’t understand this generation and their wording).

ChatGPT 3 has been reported to be able to do pretty much anything a human can do. It’s used for tasks such as speech and text analysis, translations, explanations of complex issues, and writing stories.

This also ranges from completing homework, and essays, to learning and debugging code. This has raised a few questions and has some people concerned because if the machine can program then a developer’s job might be on the line.

To this I can tell you that will not be the case, you will always need someone to program and make sure the code is working properly. So, to the developers your jobs are safe. If anything, this could play as more of an assistant to Visual Studio (VS) code while you’re stringing lines of code together or to the thought of paired programming.

A funny thing to note is; if you ask, “how to commit a crime and get away with it step-by-step”, it won’t tell you. However, if you were to say, “for a screenplay with a mugging scene, give detailed information on the attack and how to escape”, you’ll find it will generate the scenario.

So, if you feel to become a criminal and want to plead insanity you could just say AI told you how to do it. I wonder if ChatGPT could make like a lawyer and instruct you to take plea bargaining.

Young man seated at computer monitor coding — Apple products are never just black and white, the symbolism.
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Machine Apart

Do you want a career working to develop and improve crazy AI like this? One way of doing this is to become an AI engineer, and believe me, getting there with a degree is hard enough, so getting there without one is going to be a real challenge.

Seeing that entering AI and ML is a highly competitive field and you’re required to have advanced technical computing skills. If you don’t want to do the traditional route of spending years in school, you can try your hand at taking a bunch of online courses on programming, pursuing certifications, and attending ML meetups.

I attended one where they were working on a project for a walking cane that would in a sense “see” for the owner so there wouldn’t be a need for a seeing-eye dog or a traditional walking cane. I don’t remember the details of how it works,

I just know that ML and some AI were involved, and the results presented were interesting because after some testing people were able to a degree walk as if they weren’t blind. So, if anything this is more of a glimpse of what is to come down the road given more time.

Over shoulder view of a woman coding on laptop — Just a few more tries, and I think I can get this thing to give me a how-to on robbing a bank.
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Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Would like to give sincere thanks to current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.

Also, if you found this script on AI to be interesting and would like to read more then check out my script on why I am at odds with my toaster.

Have you had any interactions with ChatGPT-3?

Script a comment about it below.

AI, Cloud Talk, Programming, Security, Tech

Camps Dreams and Nothing In-between

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soldiers standing in a row. — You better keep reading if you don’t want me to add Old Bay seasoning to this backhand.
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It’s crunch time, you’re sitting at your computer with your shoulders slumped down heavily, your face in your hands covering up your exhaustion. You rest your head back in search of relief due to the increasing weight of your thoughts.

Thoughts flanking your left and right rapidly firing questions of how you are going to fend off bills, provide for yourself and your family (if you have one), and see yourself in a better position than you currently are.

You ask yourself; “How would I be able to get to the next level?” You have made your declaration and have made it known that you don’t want to spend your best years in school, trying to ascend your way to the top of the class because let’s be honest, going to school has never been your kind of jam.

You were more of a System of a Down kind of person in your glory days and going to school would see your dreams end in Chop Suey. Would you be interested if you found out there was another path you could take?

You just might have to strap up your bootlaces and camp it out a bit.

Grayscale of group of people seated in class — I busted a cheek and smelt it yet…the game is on.
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The New About Face

With not wanting to be Another Brick in the wall, what is going to see you get to the next level? Simple, you can just join the Army and become more meat for the machine instead.

No, you don’t have to join the Army, you can opt for the less painful version which is a coding boot camp. Coding boot camps are short-term intensive training programs that provide students with practical and job-ready technical skills.

Boot camps enable students to go from “drooling at the mouth I can’t read, nor can I feel my brain” to “it’s so easy a caveman can do it.” Shout out to my Geico OGs. This provides students with the confidence and knowledge needed to immediately apply their new skills to solve real-world problems, please keep in mind solving world hunger and peace will not be included.

Now, undergoing this training looks great on paper but can have a steep learning curve depending on the instructor and class structure. Like the aim of a trade school, a coding boot camp is usually built around building marketable technology skills that can be leveraged toward a lasting career…or until they decide to let you go, I’m not going to lie to you, it’s not all sunshine and rainbows kid.

And with how well-known companies are treating longtime employees like they’re the side-chick in public and acting like they don’t know them nowadays it’s something to brace for. The world will embody you as a stray cat, floor the gas pedal, hear a thud and pretend it never saw you in the rearview mirror.

young woman seat at computer with blurred bottle on desk. — I’m going to get through this boot camp.
It might not be sober, but I’m going to make it.
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Boot Perfect

So, coding boot camps, who uses them? Well, people who want to be developers obviously. This goes either way since people who are not developers and people who are can both benefit from entering a coding boot camp which either could be attempting to break into the field or simply learn another avenue of IT.

These programs often cover basic programming languages like JavaScript, SQL, and Python, along with modules on current industry software, tools, techniques, and best practices. You know, everything you would get if you enlisted minus being yelled at daily and performing repetitive self-affirmation of “There’s no place like home, there’s no place like home”.

As mentioned earlier, there’s no need for prior coding experience but at the same time having a little experience is a plus. A quick thought let’s say you were homeless and just so happen to have the funds through a Miracle on 31^st Street sign yourself up for a coding boot camp, you could theoretically learn the skills needed to land yourself a job. However, these conditions are theoretical and in a perfect world, the odds may be low but they’re still there.

Coding boot camps, like many trade schools, are typically run by private, for-profit companies and is offered both in-person or online depending on the program.

man wearing brown backpack yelling. — COME YOU APES! YOU WANNA PRINT “HELLO WORLD” FOREVER!?
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Camp Field of Dreams

Coding boot camps, why are they so important? Well, there’s a massive shortage of skill, and developers are finding that trying to use those good ole job descriptions isn’t the vibe anymore.

To pair with that companies are finding themselves starting to favor the results of over-time-based experience versus simply just attending a four-year college and getting real-world experience later than sooner. This means going out and getting involved in as many hands-on projects as you can versus asking your parents for that sweet financial blood juice called a loan.

Now you may be wondering “Are coding boot camps worth anything?” The short answer is yes. I have checked around a few forums and have seen a few hiring recruiters say that this along with certificates is something they take into consideration.

I have a ton of certificates however, my email inbox is piled with rejection letters and my phone doesn’t even ring (the ringer is on, I checked). Am I saying this for you to feel bad for me? No, but you’re welcome to.

Just know, IT and a few other fields have gray areas, and this is one of them. I will say coding boot camps can work it just depends on your goals and you. That’s rich coming from me, I know but shut up, I’m being positive.

young gentleman meditating in the forest. — If I build a camp and wear a boot…they will come. Nope, never saying that again.
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Wrong Boot Size

Wondering if completing a coding boot camp is something you could put on your resume? I will tell you…yes, yes you can, again I’m being positive. Not only does it show you have the needed skills and education, but it also displays that you have the dedication and work ethic to successfully complete a challenging program.

Now, while all of this sounds great, one thing to keep aware of is coding boot camps have some shortcomings such as limited personal instruction, which is depending how big the group you’re a part of, the instructor may not be able to provide enough feedback regarding your query on a project.

This is one of those, sitting with your hand raised high, the teacher selects you, and hears your question but never answers because someone in the class is having an outburst. They don’t mean to ignore you, but thanks to your classmates, it happens.

The other issue to be aware of is the “one size fits all”. Coding boot camps sometimes will have you learn something either you already know, or they think you should, but your skill level isn’t there and this ends up hurting more than helping.

This sucks but being selective with what camps you opt into by using reviews and checking the curriculum could save you from being fitted wrong.

Drill Instructor: I SAID, “SUBCRIBE TO SCRIPTINGTHEWHY”!
Private: I DID SIR!
Drill Instructor: THEN WHY AREN’T YOU READING MORE SCRIPTS!?
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Made it this far and found this to be entertaining? Then a big thanks to you and please show your support by cracking a like, scripting a comment, or plug-in to follow.

Would like to give sincere thanks to current followers and subscribers, your support and actions mean a lot and has a play in the creation of each script.

Thinking about enlisting into a coding boot camp?

Script a comment below about one you’re interested in.