Introduction
“I am still learning.” — Michelangelo
As the great Michelangelo said once — “I’m still learning”. Aren’t we all still learning and always continue to do so? In today’s world, everything is super connected and we can get anything on-demand. What an exciting time to be in this world!
The field of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning has grown multiple-folds in just the last decade. If you keep up with the research, you’ll go gaga! Almost every now and then a new development comes up making the last one obsolete.
The major question that arises in the minds of a lot of beginners is –
- How to manage their learning in such a fast-paced environment?
- How to take out time from the everyday schedule to learn about the growing AI and ML?
AI revolution
The world around us is changing at massive speeds. Technologies such as personal assistants, self-driven cars, automatic retail checkout stores are a reality today. What if you thought about these applications 5–10 years. It would have seemed to be a fantasy! But why now? How has AI been able to make so much of development?
The basic answer to this question comprises of 3 reasons –
- Data Generation
- Computational power
- Storage cost
We use our smartphones and other electronic devices more than we spend time with real humans. Be it social media apps like Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, or watching movies and other content on YouTube, Netflix, etc. This trend has caused a massive boom in the data generation.
Let us look at another interesting graph which signifies the cost of hard drives along with the year.
What used to cost a million dollars in the 80’s costs around a few cents now. That is the level of cost drop of hard drives!
Finally, the third trend shows how much the cost of computation has dropped!
As you can see the cost of running a computation on data has come down drastically and it continues to fall. This opens up opportunities that were not possible historically.
Therefore, in essence, we are creating and storing data at a humungous scale and can run computations on it at very low costs.
Learning on the go
The impact of the applications of AI can be huge and it can reap benefits on a global scale. Now that we know the sheer importance of AI and ML how do we make sure that our learning is up to mark as a beginner?
One thing that helped me achieve my goal is to learn on the move. Even when the pandemic hit, I noticed that I was much more comfortable with my mobile phone than my laptop or dumb old desktop. There are some benefits of learning from a mobile phone –
- Learn anywhere and everywhere — Whether it’s a car seat or a pot seat, the mobile phone is the most accessible tool. It is hard to learn when you are doing office work so take your phone out while in the breaks and start learning. 🙂
- Physically rewarding — Are you one of those people who doesn’t like to sit still? Take a small walk around your room. Stand up and sit at a different place. Learning should be done with a relaxed mind.
- Universal tool — Not everyone can afford to learn on a system. Due to the pandemic, a lot of schools have turned to mobile learning forcing many parents to buy smartphones. Let us take a much more efficient approach to learn AI through this awesome device.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) are changing the world around us. From functions to industries, AI and ML are disrupting how we work and how we function.