Wow, it has already been almost a month since I started!
My new playground covers IoT and AI, and I am supposed to have a broad understanding of both.
Regarding IoT, my recent background helped me grow a solid groundwork for that. I am fairly comfortable with the concepts, and with the involved technologies. Moreover, I have a colleague whose sole purpose is to understand and build IoT solutions, so my bases are well covered.
When it comes to Artificial Intelligence, the coast is less clear.
First, it is not a domain where I have any background, neither in the theory (math, bio science…) nor practical (any implementation of AI).
Second, AI is the 2018 version of the Cloud in 2014 : everyone wants to do it, but not one has a clear definition of what we are talking about.
Last but not least, the very term AI covers almost anything, from a chatbot to augmented reality to self-driving cars.
My process has been a bit convoluted so far.
First thing I have tried was to register for e-learning (MOOC or otherwise) sessions on the topic. I have tried several, from OpenEDX to Microsoft AI school, to Google and Tensorflow. The content ranged from very high level, which was mostly too high for me, to algebra (which was a bit too deep for me).
Then I tried to read about the market. So I read a lot of whitepapers, from Microsoft, from DataIKU, from Forrester etc.
This was rather useful, as it gave me basic understanding of where the situation was.
I recommend Dataiku Machine Learning Demystified : https://pages.dataiku.com/machine-learning-basics-illustrated-guidebook
But still, I felt I was stuck in the theory and could not find the practical applications.
After some discussions with my usual suspect, Microsoft, I did have a look at their business uses cases and testimonies.
I have to admit, some of them were pretty interesting… however there is absolutely no information about the architecture or implementation of the solution, which left me wanting.
I finally found two Microsoft websites who did a good job of describing architectural templates, along with potential uses cases.
https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/solutions/architecture/?solution=big-data
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/architecture
This is where I started digging, and it made my mind spin with all the possibilities. You will have to wait a bit for the outcomes, and follow what SCC will be doing on this market in the coming weeks 😉
Last note, one of the smartest guy I have met at Microsoft, Frederic Wickert has started an AI business, and is writing, in French, to help debunk AI for us. I definitely recommend reading his posts! I admit I have not yet read the whole post, to avoid repeating everything here 😉