Latest / Agentic Conversations (formally mlops.community) / Scaling Similarity Learning at Digits // Hannes Hapke // Coffee Sessions #122
Transcript
- 0:00Hi, Buzz. I'm from Portland, Oregon.
- 0:02The coffee City. Normally, I like to drink my
- 0:06coffee as a latte, double stop. But right now, I take a little
- 0:11break from it and I switch to green tea.
- 0:14I got a ton of takeaways from this conversation.
- 0:16First one has to be hands down data hygiene man, like the
- 0:22importance of data hygiene and how honest was able to map out
- 0:26what good data hygiene looks like.
- 0:28Not only From the machine learning perspective.
- 0:31But also from just like the software engineering
- 0:35perspective, from a design perspective, from the back end,
- 0:38engineering all the way data Engineers, everything that was
- 0:42mind-blowing to me, I loved it. What about you and who are we
- 0:45talking to you? By the way, I didn't even say
- 0:47harnesses name and what he does and where he's working, and I'll
- 0:50get into that. I'll get into that, I'll give
- 0:52the intro and then I'll let you get my takeaway.
- 0:54So, Thomas hopko. First off.
- 0:56Awesome guy, incredible guy, he's the first MLS.
- 1:00Engineer at digits where they are building Financial tools for
- 1:03the future. I mean, really, you guys gotta
- 1:05listen to this episode in here about it.
- 1:06And at digits, he started, he started and sort of laid the
- 1:10foundation for their ml Ops approach and their machine
- 1:12learning approach as a company. He prior two digits has worked
- 1:17in a number of Industries, including retail, Healthcare and
- 1:19Erp companies. And he's actually the co-author
- 1:22of to machine learning books. One of which we talked a lot
- 1:24about building machine learning pipelines, which is published by
- 1:27O'Reilly. You should go check it out and
- 1:29the S being an LP and action for Manning.
- 1:32So that's hottest incredibly impressive guy.
- 1:35And I really, really, really enjoyed two.
- 1:39Takeaways I'll say number one. I loved his point about how
- 1:42thoughtful design supercharges machine learning and vice versa.
- 1:46It's such an interesting point that honestly it's the first
- 1:50time that we've had someone on podcast and like 100 episodes
- 1:53come on and say that. Yeah.
- 1:55And then the second takeaway that I had was really Around the
- 2:00twenty one minute Mark hannes walks through the entirety of
- 2:05their machine learning Pipeline and the and how they implemented
- 2:09it. And like what all the elements
- 2:11are what the alerting looks like with tooling looks like.
- 2:13And I'm like if anybody is like building machine Learning
- 2:17System, they should just like cut that clip and like listen to
- 2:19it and like rights print tickets based on their team.
- 2:22But yes right sprinting, it's based on what he describes the
- 2:26features as and you're like, okay, build a learning into
- 2:29slack, fine. Right.
- 2:30We're going to put that as a Sprint ticket.
- 2:31I thought that was such a cool and like complete elucidation of
- 2:35like, what a machine Learning System was.
- 2:36So, this is a great conversation.
- 2:39We specialize in great break down real fast.
- 2:41What you mean by Design superpowers or design?
- 2:47Supercharges machine learning. Yeah.
- 2:49Yeah. I mean, machine learning in a
- 2:53product, is kind of a double-edged sword, right?
- 2:56Because it can make the product a lot more useful.
- 3:00But it depends on assumed and strictly defined behavior from.
- 3:07Users right? Think about all of the ways that
- 3:11YouTube, for example, the delays YouTube's recommendation,
- 3:14algorithms are gamed by unsavory actors, like Neo-Nazi groups and
- 3:18whatever. That's an example, where like
- 3:20users are exploiting poor product design around the
- 3:24machine learning algorithm. But the other way is true as
- 3:26well, right? Like, you know, with other kinds
- 3:28of recommendation systems like maybe tick-tocks or something
- 3:30like that. People find really great
- 3:33thoughtful content because the way that the system app is
- 3:35actually designed Promotes effective use of the algorithm
- 3:39to find things that people really like.
- 3:41Now depends on the way you think about Tick-Tock.
- 3:42I just use that an example. I'm not saying it literally but
- 3:46that's, you know, I'm on Tick-Tock now, you know, and I
- 3:48know you are waiting for you to stitch one of my videos.
- 3:52I'll leave a link to that in the description in case anyone wants
- 3:55to come join me. I get like five watches per
- 3:59video and I thought talks algorithm was supposed to send
- 4:02stuff out. I guess my stuff.
- 4:03Isn't that good though? So every come on man, come and
- 4:06Me out everyone starts somewhere, but yeah, that's how
- 4:08that's to me how design and and machine learning go together,
- 4:12right? They're really, they're really,
- 4:15really a powerful pair when when used effectively well yeah, I
- 4:19liked how he was talking about when they are thinking,
- 4:23basically, the way that the design team and the Machine
- 4:26learning team interact is fascinating to me, and it feels
- 4:29like they've really, they're really advanced in that way and
- 4:32there's a lot of benefits from coming together and Having
- 4:36multiple touch points and just talking about like having the
- 4:39design team being literate in machine learning stuff that
- 4:44they're doing like, and how they, the machine learning team
- 4:47will sometimes go back and they'll teach the design team
- 4:51different concepts. So that they understand what is
- 4:54possible. But then when he was talking
- 4:58about, how they baked in explain ability into the tool so that
- 5:01they wouldn't be getting as much garbage data or that the end
- 5:05user could And why they were getting certain recommendations.
- 5:10I thought that was awesome. That was it's just super cool to
- 5:12see. I mean, he goes into so much
- 5:15detail and he's so transparent about how and why is it, did
- 5:19everything I thought this was awesome because of that, like
- 5:22it's rare. I feel like people are so open
- 5:25when they come on here and he was very much from the get-go,
- 5:28like these things need to be talked about.
- 5:30We need to be addressing these problems, and I want to help get
- 5:34the word out about it. So, Hannes might have one like
- 5:38my favorite human of the Year award.
- 5:40He was great. And I think we should let the
- 5:42listeners get into it. Let's do it.
- 5:48I think we have to start with your book.
- 5:51Like, give us a breakdown. How did you even decide to
- 5:56create such a beast and like, tell us about that process?
- 6:00And why? Well, I don't know about this,
- 6:04her beast, but I think any technical book is about East
- 6:06because like while you write the book anything behind the scenes
- 6:09is changing new versions of coming out and you're like
- 6:11constantly rewriting chapters. So that qualifies it - piece for
- 6:15every technical author. Why that book it started out of
- 6:21the need of like, having a concise into end overview about
- 6:26like how to implement machine learning, machine learning Ops
- 6:30for both companies. So, like, starting with, like,
- 6:33what is the data ingestion through the data?
- 6:36The model training model, validation Amanda serving part
- 6:40back in the days of like, the serving part.
- 6:42Like ten civil servant came out and that sort of like they
- 6:44started to standardize the ways of how we deploy machine
- 6:47learning models. And then liked, I think tensile
- 6:51load data validation came out and we're sort of like there was
- 6:53a tool to analyze the data and then we have like, luckily your
- 6:57more tools like great expectations and others.
- 7:01But what was missing was the glue code of like how do we
- 7:06connect? Checked, all the different
- 7:07tools. There was like, tentacle turns
- 7:09from came out at some point, but it was this piece missing
- 7:12between tens of the data validation, schema generation,
- 7:15and then principal transformed. And so, the original goal of the
- 7:21of the book was like, how do we connect on the different pieces?
- 7:24And what would be, what, how would the pipeline look like?
- 7:28Well, then one year right into writing this book, Google open
- 7:32source, their internal tfx platform.
- 7:35Basically the Between those different different tools.
- 7:40And then I was in the scenario of length.
- 7:42Let's rewrite this whole thing and that's why we focus solely
- 7:46on tfx, because that was the platform at the time.
- 7:50Going out of coming out and I think it's for anybody who's
- 7:55interested in getting in the understanding of like, how can I
- 7:58put those pens together? How can I consistently trained?
- 8:01My machine learning models. I hope this book is a good
- 8:03introduction, and overview and show.
- 8:06Showcasing up. Like, how to do this with one
- 8:08tool? And how much have you thought
- 8:11about going back and rewriting it?
- 8:14Now after a few years like, or how, how do you fight the urge
- 8:18to not like, have to update every Edition.
- 8:22Every time, you're like, oh man, now I wanna, I want to add that,
- 8:25that thought came up maybe 30 minutes after we hit submit and
- 8:32the final draft or writing, there's like, a time frame
- 8:35between yourself major Final draft and then they do all the
- 8:38magic work behind the scenes until you actually get the hard
- 8:41copy. And I think Google released like
- 8:45an in major minor version upgrade like some some cool
- 8:48features an event like, damn it. Yeah.
- 8:52So cool to add this feature but at some point you just have to
- 8:56you have to stop because they're like some people saying hey
- 9:01missing this component like I think in probability for
- 9:04validation component landed after we It such a cool
- 9:07component to test machine learning models before you
- 9:10actually release them into the Royal.
- 9:12But there's, if you continuously update the model or update
- 9:16another model, but then book, then it's a moving Target in
- 9:20this really hard to get the book out.
- 9:23So sad with like printed copies, it's really hard to keep them to
- 9:29the, to reduce the time frame between like last edit.
- 9:33And the print, there's always Delta there.
- 9:37Yeah, makes complete sense and I'm wondering, like when you
- 9:43were thinking about writing the book because there is some piece
- 9:46of it that you can abstract away and does not have to focus on
- 9:50the tooling, right? And then there is another piece
- 9:52of it, where it is purely tooling, and it's purely code.
- 9:56And like you said it has to change as the like when tfx
- 10:01whatever 3.0 comes out, then. Oh, now everything.
- 10:05That we put in the code in the book is no longer valid, or so.
- 10:10So, like, what are in your mind? Some of those pieces that are
- 10:16the, the former where it's like, or sorry, former ladder.
- 10:19Yeah, the, the parts that you can abstract away that are not
- 10:23this specific code Snippets. I think as a specific before,
- 10:27Emma, laughs is sort of the thinking about how to get how to
- 10:30go from raw data to a model and how to serve that model, I think
- 10:35we Regardless of what will you use at the end, there's a mental
- 10:38workflow of like how you deal with your machine learning model
- 10:41and the corresponding data, for example, the concept of a meta
- 10:45data store. It doesn't matter what what
- 10:47store you use or like what format or what orchestrator you
- 10:52used to Orchestra, do machine learning by plants.
- 10:54The fact is that you think about the orchestrator to coordinate
- 10:58your machine line? Prevents the times, did you
- 11:00think about like The Meta data store, what's the value of
- 11:04setting up this? I think those are the pieces.
- 11:07I would love to for the folks to take away from the book that
- 11:10they may be the the specific tool.
- 11:13We making maybe the version We pinned for this book is sort of
- 11:17like outdated but the concepts and the sort of like a the the
- 11:25concepts and the mental thinking around like how do we actually
- 11:28structure machine learning Ops in a company or in, for any
- 11:32large project? I would hope that this The
- 11:35takeaway for the book and just as a side note, we went back
- 11:38after the release and we updated all the example, code to tf-x
- 11:441-0, do the review. They have a pin version.
- 11:48And so we support this, unfortunately, it's not that
- 11:50printer. Copy that I'm glad.
- 11:53I'm glad you guys got to do that.
- 11:54You guys got to do that. And did that with the companion,
- 11:56code for the book? One question, I have you pointed
- 12:01out this, this mental model of a pipeline where You know, you
- 12:06have to think about from the very raw files, that, you know,
- 12:12are are used. As you know, the source
- 12:16information all the way to the model output like that, that the
- 12:19mental model, there's a pipeline.
- 12:20And so, I started off as a machine-learning engineer and
- 12:23I've been learning more about like traditional Concepts and
- 12:25data engineering, right? We're in data engineering, I
- 12:28think a lot of this notion of like pipeline development,
- 12:31starting with cron jobs, it, Facebook in 2010, you know,
- 12:36That, that literally, you know, I'd be owed everything was just
- 12:39a bunch of, you know, shell commands and stuff that I think
- 12:43data engineering. Really like, got the whole
- 12:48software engineering industry, thinking about this, mental
- 12:50model a pipeline or this design pattern of a pipeline.
- 12:53And I'm kind of curious, you know, from your standpoint.
- 12:56Like, how did you weave in to the book?
- 12:59Some of the concepts of data engineering that are really
- 13:02essential to doing machine learning engineering.
- 13:04Well, how did you approach? That sort of crossover.
- 13:08That's that's a really good question.
- 13:10I think, when I, when I started looking into machine learning
- 13:13operations, specifically coming from the data sign of data
- 13:17scientist world or from the mirror machine learning world.
- 13:19I started really appreciating a patch of being not fully
- 13:24understanding the concept at the beginning, but then sort of like
- 13:26overnight unpeeled the onion at every layer.
- 13:30I got deeper and deeper. It felt like.
- 13:31Wow, this isn't a magic tool. This is a magic tool.
- 13:34And to your point is like This is probably today's version of
- 13:37the Cron job. Everybody's using some sort of
- 13:39like a pipeline to Le Petit beam, airflow, whatever.
- 13:43But those those tools are actually keeping the machine
- 13:46learning world, I guess. Alive.
- 13:48Like that's that's what I would say.
- 13:49Like in the book itself, every T of X component is based on
- 13:56Apache bean and we stressed in the book of like how can you
- 14:01write your custom components? How can you write?
- 14:03Like we only show like People being cold.
- 14:06And I think that's out of the scope of the book to actually
- 14:09introduce the art, go beyond the introduction to Apache Bean, but
- 14:13if you want to ride your own components, and each component
- 14:17is sort of handling terabytes of data.
- 14:20Like, this is a good approach, like think about the data in
- 14:23such a way that you can paralyze things and do you point of like
- 14:28maybe back in the day, was cron, jobs now, it's Apache beam.
- 14:32We use data flow at digits. That's like It's not just about
- 14:37training the model. I think training the models
- 14:39actually, everybody has talked about this like how can we
- 14:43design the architecture and there's so much things around
- 14:46it, which we need to setup and tuned to actually get those
- 14:51pipelines to work. And the core part of that is
- 14:53like, how can be paralyzed the data ingestion, the
- 14:56pre-processing, maybe towards an efficient training.
- 15:00So when I one thing I would also like to for folks, to take away
- 15:05from the book and we're What will you use as like the
- 15:09pre-processing of the data is a and you benefit from this?
- 15:14Once you deal with like terabytes of data on your legs
- 15:16to shuffles through, like you want you to run multiple
- 15:19iterations over your data. But then, the big win there is
- 15:24like, if you take those graphs, you generate from that
- 15:27pre-processing and you attach this to the later produced
- 15:30model, that is an ultimate solution against Training
- 15:35Services. You like that's what we do a
- 15:38digits. Like when we progress our data
- 15:40we automatically generate a pre-processing graph and then we
- 15:44will ship the model to production.
- 15:45We connect those two pieces, the pre-processing graph, plus the
- 15:49train model, and then all the sudden, all the changes we make
- 15:52during our training run trickle through automatic view to our
- 15:56production deployment. I mean I'm taking a second to
- 15:59process what you do. What you just said there
- 16:01Demetrios you look like you have a question about that?
- 16:03Yeah I think that's a really interesting.
- 16:06Sure thing, one that I hadn't heard before, like with this
- 16:08training serving skew because that is something that comes up
- 16:12quite a bit. And I know that I've heard like
- 16:16a feature store. For example, is something that
- 16:18will combat that but I hadn't heard of this pre-processing
- 16:21angle and maybe can you just go a little bit deeper into how
- 16:26that looks? Yeah, maybe an example.
- 16:29Yeah, it totally. So the typical example is like,
- 16:35let's say you have a feature you want to normalize And you train
- 16:40your, you have some values in your living official store, or
- 16:45like in your, in your raw data, big data sets.
- 16:49And so, you have a mean and a standard deviation given on
- 16:54that. So in your, let's say you use a
- 16:57pre-processing tool like tents will transform, the tool itself
- 17:02does two passes over the data. And so that's one pass over the
- 17:05data to determine. What's my mean what's The
- 17:07deviation for this particular feature and then it does another
- 17:11path of the data to actually formalize those values.
- 17:14And so in that process, it generates a post processing data
- 17:19set that data set, you can then use to retrain your models or to
- 17:24train your models. So in that case, every time you
- 17:27pull a batch, you don't have to process the data anymore, so
- 17:31that happens once. And if you iterate over the data
- 17:33set multiple times, you see some pre-processing time there.
- 17:37But the other Oh cool benefit of that is you generate a graph
- 17:42from based on all the pre-processing computation.
- 17:45So meaning that the the graph contains of like here's a raw
- 17:50value, how do you manipulate that Rob value to get to the
- 17:53normalized version? And that this is a normalized
- 17:57value and that is generated during the training process?
- 18:01And then when you deploy that machine learning model, that
- 18:03model receives the raw data. But before it actually hits the
- 18:08model for the prediction, it has to go through the pre-processing
- 18:10graph. So then you would subtract the
- 18:14mean, do you mean normalization values or whatever you want to
- 18:18do in that moment? And that is a really good
- 18:23approach to like keep the training in sync with the CERN.
- 18:27And if you use a machine learning pipeline, then this
- 18:30happens, We don't even today. We don't even think about it
- 18:33anymore. So we have like in our case that
- 18:35digits we pre processes our unstructured data in various
- 18:42ways. But if you if somebody makes a
- 18:45change to the pre-processing step that triggers a reader,
- 18:48retraining of the model that triggers a redeploy of the model
- 18:51and that changed goes out hand in hand.
- 18:54I have this happening in the past, there was working with
- 18:58another data scientist. I would suppose once before, The
- 19:01machine learning apps that they despise was once before the
- 19:04model itself, we had a little glitch in the communication.
- 19:09I forgot to mention that as I go, I change, the bedding is
- 19:12Generation here and then all the sudden we deploy the model.
- 19:17So I want garbage for a couple days and or we saw the garbage
- 19:21immediately but it took a couple days to actually figure out what
- 19:24actually what happened here and then after we realize that mmm
- 19:28that pre-processing is out of Sin from the From the internal
- 19:32of the model. So in if you go by those
- 19:35connecting those pieces, you basically prevent those
- 19:39scenarios from the get-go. I think this, this step of
- 19:45machine learning engineering around, curating, your data
- 19:49structuring your data and applying the same software
- 19:51engineering Precision that you do to model training to data
- 19:56pre-processing. It's something that we're not
- 20:00just starting to Emphasize in Industry applications like
- 20:04yours. It's also something I'm starting
- 20:06to see in the actual education of ml Engineers now.
- 20:10So for example in the full stack deep learning course that's
- 20:13running right now. I'm sure some of the people in
- 20:15the community and on this podcast or listening to it or
- 20:17are following along with that course.
- 20:18There's a big emphasis on like some of the data parallelism
- 20:24Concepts that you've talked about some of the emphasis on
- 20:26like ways to process data. Not just, in terms of tricks to
- 20:30improve. Training, but ways that actually
- 20:33enable you to scale your machine Learning System more
- 20:36effectively, right? And I think this, this is kind
- 20:38of, what is the concept that you're getting to their.
- 20:41The question I have is, I see your point about the
- 20:45pre-processing and I see your point about how you involve it.
- 20:48How do you, what tools, do you actually use?
- 20:49How do you actually use the continuous integration?
- 20:52Continuous deployment? What kinds of testing, do you
- 20:54have for the code itself to make sure that, you know, these
- 20:59changes happen in a continuous? Is fashion and you don't need a
- 21:02lot of human involvement. Yeah.
- 21:05Very good question. I think you touched on a very
- 21:07important point. I think the last couple years,
- 21:10we made this transition to adopt a bunch of software, engineering
- 21:14principles in them in the data science and field.
- 21:18I don't know if that is, what is the foundation now, from for
- 21:21Emma UPS, I hope more of those software Concepts coming to the
- 21:25whole data, science, environmental and data science
- 21:27thinking, like I see. Luckily more towards you, for
- 21:33example, version notebooks. Like I initially that's a really
- 21:37hard thing to like, how you make a change in a notebook and then
- 21:40it's hard to dip them. How does it look like an hour
- 21:45and our site. So we try to remove humans as
- 21:49much as we can. So do walk through an example,
- 21:55here we have a pipeline set up the pipeline has like an Point
- 22:01to get the data from so that could be like static files.
- 22:04In our case it's like a big query, a database.
- 22:08We have the there's a there's a statistics generation and a
- 22:14schema generation that happens automatically we use 10-spoke
- 22:16extended. That's a freebie we get from
- 22:18those components. We have the code for the
- 22:22transform. That is pure python code.
- 22:25We have to use in this case to actually generate the graph, we
- 22:28use tensorflow ups for this. That allows us to go on to
- 22:34combine those pre-processing graphs with the with them
- 22:38trained model but it doesn't have to be the case.
- 22:41There's a new component coming out in or has been released
- 22:45where you can use pandarus, do the Transformations and that
- 22:49code can be tested. So you can have like pure unit
- 22:51test and say like hey this is my raw data.
- 22:53This is my expected outcome of that transform function, that
- 22:59model training. We do in Liberty, we do some
- 23:03testing around that as well. Like what do we expect from the
- 23:07architecture? The core pieces of young pitcher
- 23:10and then the model analysis and that's sort of like highly
- 23:13standardized like you have like you have a Max break, you have
- 23:16your test data going in that in itself is like is automated and
- 23:22then we write custom components to go beyond this.
- 23:25Like for example, we have like qualitative data sets and
- 23:29quantitative data sets with running them against Every model
- 23:32and then we compare them against the last trained or deployed
- 23:34model and see the dip. And that generates a report for
- 23:38us showing, what's the Improvement in this case?
- 23:42And then we push this model into the registry and when this
- 23:46happens we get a message in slack say like hey here's a new
- 23:49model available. It's not deployed at this point
- 23:51because then somebody that's the one human touch Point data
- 23:56scientist. Go xion.
- 23:57Looks at all the reports be automatically generated, And
- 24:01there's a check. Is that is it something we
- 24:04expected? Is it better?
- 24:05Is it worse? Does like a interpretation of
- 24:08those results and if that happens then we make another
- 24:14commit as her. I forgot to mention at the
- 24:16beginning, those pipeline runs are triggered through CI
- 24:19systems. So you have a bunch of trigger
- 24:21trigger points like currently we have to make a commit to a repo.
- 24:25So that is all all code reviewed to actually trigger the pipeline
- 24:29itself, we're looking into. You automatically triggering
- 24:32this. Once we have X number of new
- 24:34samples reviewed from another data pipeline, but that's
- 24:39currently in development. But then once the model is
- 24:42produced and registered with the model registry and the data
- 24:45scientist has looked at it, then we make another commit and say
- 24:49like okay now we want to deploy this model and in that case they
- 24:53did, if they decide to just confirms the model, the idea
- 24:56every model regenerate out of gets automatically videos on
- 25:00confirms That uid confirms the configuration but that's all in
- 25:03configuration file. Commits this to repo and then we
- 25:05have this guy system which is like figuring out.
- 25:08OK, what has changed what version of the increasing number
- 25:11of instances machine times Etc. And then handles the deployment.
- 25:16So nope, we basically no human can deploy models like manually.
- 25:23Everything has to go through a code pieces.
- 25:26So I'm fascinated by how you've architected this and where you
- 25:31put the human checked in and why you ended up saying, all right,
- 25:36everything is going to be automated until it gets to this
- 25:40point where the data scientist is going to look at it.
- 25:43Like how did you say at this point is when we want the data
- 25:46scientists to go look at it and they say it's good then it gets
- 25:49pushed out and everything gets put into its database and it all
- 25:54gets that. Lineage that Tracked back to it
- 25:57but there's it seems to me like there's only one touch point for
- 26:01a human in the loop. Right?
- 26:02And why did you decide that one touch point is where it is.
- 26:06Hi, this is mihail Eric. I'm the founder of pun intended
- 26:10Innovation and confetti Ai. And this is a quick Public
- 26:13Service Announcement. If you're tired of having
- 26:15nightmares about the machine learning models, we have in
- 26:17production, then I encourage you to subscribe to the ml Ops
- 26:20Community podcast, it's where all the cool ml Ops kids hang
- 26:24out and learn how to tame their ml.
- 26:26Jules. I think it's this touch this
- 26:29it's at this point in time because then we have the model
- 26:33fully trained me up the model fully evaluated and the reports
- 26:38generated to do that. Extend that we can actually have
- 26:42a conversation about the model improvements.
- 26:45Like we have a number of pipeline runs where we saw minor
- 26:50improvements and we bailed on deploying that machine learning
- 26:55model. And then that sort of like a
- 26:59group discussion will sell at, hey, be serious.
- 27:01Improvement of like less than half a percent or something.
- 27:04Do we actually going to go through and spend the
- 27:07engineering efforts to backfill or data that would that has been
- 27:12also across as we massively improved over the last couple
- 27:15weeks? Initially was always a big
- 27:18undertaking. So now the burden to re get new
- 27:21moms out as much Nest but that's always sort of like, in that
- 27:25moment we can Discuss the trade-off between, is it worth
- 27:29while to deploy this model or potentially, even discover a
- 27:33model which which performance is that decreasing?
- 27:37And then we're like, okay we don't want to do this, but I
- 27:40know earlier point in time we have all the reports available
- 27:42and like all the evaluations and that is probably also the last
- 27:47moment before we would create I don't want to say harm by but
- 27:51chaos and like maybe mess up some data so that it's like, In
- 27:56my mind, as I was like the ideal Point, like we're ready to go,
- 27:59but like you're right before the rocket launch, but we're you
- 28:01bail on the rocket launch personally, I like that.
- 28:05So can you talk to us about the updates you did with the
- 28:09backfilling of the data and how you change that?
- 28:12Like what was the pre and post? What does that look like?
- 28:15Yes, I think I have two digits. We do a live with like a
- 28:21different machine learning like in a typical standard machine
- 28:25learning case where you do like Computer models and like you
- 28:29take every data record and you would run over the entire data
- 28:33set again and just recompute everything and in our particular
- 28:39case and then maybe we need to talk a little bit about like
- 28:42what Y is like this case a little bit different.
- 28:46We we not just want to re not just want to recompute
- 28:50everything. So we know we don't do pure
- 28:54classifications. We do like similarity Machine
- 28:56learning. And so, in that case, we have to
- 28:58take every record and then generate an event in for this
- 29:01and then recompute every embedding to against all the
- 29:03other embeddings, clearly that doesn't scale for like a fast
- 29:07growing startup. So in that case, those backfill
- 29:11processes we had to make some tweaks to do to improve this,
- 29:15this speed up to recompute once we ship a new model version and
- 29:21so a couple of things will be changed is like the way we
- 29:24ingest the way we generate. Those buildings in the first
- 29:27place, that's something we highly paralyzed back to your
- 29:29point, which news I click making things parallelizable is like,
- 29:33so that was the key there. And then when we compute our
- 29:38nearest neighbors for our similarity, assessments, we
- 29:44heavily optimized, the way we find nearest neighbors for our
- 29:49transactions, that I find similar transactions, but given
- 29:51transactions. And then the way we, WE Post
- 29:54process that So that was like a massive undertaking by the
- 29:59amount team, the last couple weeks and all the improvements
- 30:04in that process trickle down to all the machine learning Apso
- 30:08because that backup process is now much easier and also fully
- 30:13automated. We can just basically register a
- 30:16new model in our registry that down down process system picks
- 30:20it up and then handles everything out of battery from
- 30:22like inferring all the nettings and recomputing all the nearest
- 30:25a So before we go further, I do want to take the opportunity to
- 30:29ask for our listeners benefit. What is it that digits actually
- 30:33does? What's the product you guys
- 30:35build? What is it?
- 30:36You do and, and how did you kind of get their totally linked?
- 30:41So digit is a, is on the mission to build like a new set of tools
- 30:46or the next generation of Finance schools.
- 30:49We're able to achieve this by like using machine learning or
- 30:53learning left. Right?
- 30:53And center. And we have a number of machine
- 30:55learning. And we sort of like sort of like
- 30:59summarize them as we call it like a living model.
- 31:03So what that means is like we ingest the books of small
- 31:06businesses and then for the we Empower and countenance and the
- 31:11business owners through the insights from digit.
- 31:14So, normally, when you're a small business, you have an
- 31:17accountant and the company comes into your books, once a month,
- 31:20classifies them, and I gives you a Pinot.
- 31:23But by the time, the accountant actually takes a look at it.
- 31:26The books already updated because you might have hired
- 31:28somebody else or you might have had another major expense in
- 31:30your pianos and they're always laughing, right?
- 31:33And so what we what we're doing it, did you just like making
- 31:35this real time? We look at the books, make a
- 31:40bunch of decisions and working together with the accountants.
- 31:43I think that's really critical of like it's not like we were
- 31:47placing the accountant, it's like we're enabling.
- 31:49They comes to be faster and to make decisions in real time for
- 31:53the business owners and that's something we do through.
- 31:56So we read the unsorted data, we get from the banks or like their
- 32:00accounting platforms. Ingest them process them with
- 32:04machine learning extract additional information, annotate
- 32:07the information or like find similar.
- 32:09Transactions, suggest category, suggest vendors things like
- 32:12this, to make all the things which the accountants are the
- 32:17business owners need a realtor and accessible.
- 32:20So instead of waiting, until the end of not of the month, you can
- 32:23go every hour and you get an updated view of.
- 32:25Like how is it, is that right now?
- 32:28I just think that, I mean, Dimitri is very small business
- 32:31owner. You've understood these kinds of
- 32:33tools, you tell me how you feel about it.
- 32:35Well, I was laughing because I was like, oh my brother is super
- 32:38lazy and he's an accountant. I gotta tell him about this tool
- 32:41who he's gonna love it. So is we have a we have a tool,
- 32:48it's called digit boost and that is heavily used in machine
- 32:51learning because the accountants keep doing their work in but
- 32:55digits boost his base. Watching the back, so it helps
- 32:57them save automating time. It helps them.
- 33:00Save time by automating. There were close, but at the
- 33:02same time, it's sort of like, watching that back.
- 33:04So if they categorize something or a sign of injured to
- 33:07something, and we have machine learning models to figure out
- 33:10was like, hey, this is looking odd like you the ten times in
- 33:13the past, he said, like, this should be, I don't know venmo.
- 33:16And now you saying this is PayPal, and we'd spend the
- 33:19middle of notifications that I hate.
- 33:21Are you sure about this? Or we can even we can go the
- 33:24other way around like that. Me.
- 33:25And I'm just like, hey, we think this is demo for you and then
- 33:29they can just say sure, I'll take that.
- 33:32So it's like a it's a perfect use case.
- 33:35I think it's a perfect use case for machine learning.
- 33:37It's a little bit underrated use case, but everybody thinks about
- 33:40self-driving, cars, and, and cool computer vision Tech but
- 33:45every small company runs on an accounting books.
- 33:48Everybody has your books, otherwise they get in trouble
- 33:51with the local tax agencies, right?
- 33:55And Perfect. Use case for machine learning.
- 33:58It does have an interesting twist.
- 34:03Every classification is highly subjective and I think it's
- 34:05solving this with machine learning is super interesting
- 34:09and I'm super excited and working on this problem.
- 34:14I mean, first off, I just think it's such an interesting
- 34:17application. Like, as you said like, you
- 34:20know, like cash management counting, like, working for
- 34:23anybody, who's worked at a start-up, you know?
- 34:26Like the way that like, you know, and that's just one flavor
- 34:29of small business and its high gross and whatever the heck
- 34:32else. But like for every business,
- 34:34there's all this like Arcane stuff that goes into like how
- 34:36you actually manage your cash, think about finance and it has
- 34:39an implication on everything, right?
- 34:41And so the idea of taking that and bringing it from, I don't
- 34:45know like the mid-twentieth century of like accounting and
- 34:48the way that it worked with like what is it credit on left?
- 34:51And on the right is something like that.
- 34:52I don't even know to to Really applying, you know, advanced
- 34:56Machine learning is it's super interesting.
- 34:58And, you know, I looked at the website for the company.
- 35:00I encourage everybody listening. Check it out.
- 35:02It's a really, I feel like once you look at the website, which
- 35:06will put in the show notes, you'll get a much better
- 35:08understanding of like, wow, this really makes sense for why, you
- 35:12know, machine learning can be used to solve this problem now,
- 35:16with and I think I love you. Go ahead.
- 35:18I think that it's hilarious that now you all are probably doing
- 35:21better than ever because of that bill that just got passed in the
- 35:24US where they're Higher whatever. 80,000 new IRS 80
- 35:30billion dollars for the IRS to. Yeah that's it.
- 35:33Eighty billion dollars enforcement.
- 35:34So everybody go go get digits and make sure you're not messing
- 35:37up. Yeah, this is free.
- 35:42So you don't have to well, this is game over.
- 35:47Where do I sign up? Yeah, the question I had though
- 35:51is you were the first time I'll engineer there You were the
- 35:55first person to start implementing machine learning or
- 35:59I'm just kind of, I'm so curious, like I've been the
- 36:01first data scientist, you know, at my company right now.
- 36:04And so, I have some understanding, but for a company
- 36:07that is so premised on the notion that like machine
- 36:09learning is, you know, one element of our secret sauce.
- 36:12Like, can you talk us through like what the first few months
- 36:15of your job were like what kinds of things were priorities for
- 36:18you? And how you spent day-to-day?
- 36:20Yeah, I have to admit. I'm yes.
- 36:23And the first She's learning engineer and the first person
- 36:26who's like totally focused on machine learning but I'm
- 36:28standing on the shoulders of giants.
- 36:30There's a there's a team. There's an amazing team of
- 36:33Engineers. They have been there for 20 plus
- 36:36years, they developed amazing data engineering infrastructure.
- 36:42That was already there when I arrived.
- 36:44So, when I spoke to the founders Geffen, Wayne they said, like,
- 36:49hey now is the right time to do machine learning because we
- 36:51spend all the time to get the data in place.
- 36:53So, in The previous jobs when I showed up, we talked a lot about
- 36:58machine learning, but then when I arrived, it was like, oh, we
- 37:00need to give it in place and you clean the data.
- 37:02We need to do this business. This was already in place, so
- 37:06there's like the team. The core team had previously
- 37:11founded in worked on crashlytics precludes.
- 37:14Got I think God bought by Twitter, Twitter ever sold this
- 37:17to Google and so the core team had like a wealth of knowledge
- 37:22about how to do data and Knowing at the scale of Google and this
- 37:26little Twitter. So for me, it coming in as a
- 37:30machine-learning Engineers, like this is the ideal place and I
- 37:35because, like the data is in a really good shape.
- 37:39They have amazing data engineering principles so I can
- 37:43come in and just put the tiny cherry on top of them.
- 37:45Amazing pie, like to really build like models.
- 37:49I can fully focus on building the models and building the
- 37:52infrastructure around how we We keep those models updated how we
- 37:57train them, how we actually use machine learning to the vast
- 38:00extent. What does that look like when a
- 38:04company has their data in good shape?
- 38:07Like can you show a tell us what some of those green flags were
- 38:11as you came in and you're just like whoa this is really nice.
- 38:14Yeah, I think it comes out in a couple things so you can ask
- 38:20questions around the data and somebody just like hate, just
- 38:23write it. Write a query for this.
- 38:24That's right. It's not like he's in some
- 38:27unstructured text files and we need to parse them first in that
- 38:30sort of stuff. You have a team who is highly
- 38:34educated in terms of like how to process the data in a parallel
- 38:38fashion. Like they were already using
- 38:42Apache Bean Google Cloud. Dataflow for two plus years.
- 38:46So there was like a whole wealth of knowledge I could tap into of
- 38:50like how do we batch process something?
- 38:53How do we stream? Of things.
- 38:56So in that moment, we only had to build the connector pieces
- 38:58between the machine learning models and the existing
- 39:01pipelines already. So it's the pipelines were
- 39:04already in a good shape. They often had like basically
- 39:12models in place already, who would do some work.
- 39:16What we then replaced with like deep learning models or that's
- 39:20always a good good point of like, if you already have like a
- 39:24base, Model present. Then it's a good moment to do
- 39:28like deep learning. Give it a soft, like try out a
- 39:32fancy model and see does it actually boost your accuracy
- 39:35rate? And in this case, I when I
- 39:38showed up, they had already done all the all the statistical
- 39:41machine learning models, all the approaches that already
- 39:44happened. And in that case, I was like,
- 39:47okay. Now I can actually bring in my
- 39:48expertise and like how to build deep learning models and how to
- 39:51build machine line pipelines to keep them fresh and updated.
- 39:53And so on. So we don't Aunt, in a lot of
- 39:57places, when machine learning Engineers are being higher than
- 40:01they started with a baseline models.
- 40:03And here I showed up and they resigned mom's priority system,
- 40:07That's why I'm every day I come to work.
- 40:10I think I am standing on the shoulders of giants because they
- 40:13that team is just amazing. That's so cool to hear.
- 40:16I was listening what you're saying and taking notes in my
- 40:20head, so three things. First data, structure data in
- 40:24good shape right was good Tools around it.
- 40:26S a good perspective on how to do data processing because I
- 40:30feel like people really Vibe with that because I think a lot
- 40:33of people they are like, okay, we can Get our data structured
- 40:37for our first iteration. But updating the data.
- 40:39How do you do that, right? And then the third piece is just
- 40:42a team that's educated on these Concepts right and just knows
- 40:45how to think about it and I think it's easy to point.
- 40:50Variety of reasons, we have like the team itself is highly
- 40:55interested in machine learning and machine learning is not a
- 40:59siloed department at digits. We work in conjunction with like
- 41:05back and enjoy. Here's data, Engineers, funded
- 41:07engineers and designers, and I think the connection between
- 41:11machine learning and design is incredibly critical.
- 41:15They usually happen in siloed departments, and so they may be
- 41:20be once a year at the Holiday party and that's when some
- 41:24knowledge transfer happens, but in our digits, we work with
- 41:29designers working on the team. So when we push out a machine
- 41:32learning model, then we have like a conversation with a
- 41:35designer. Like, okay, how does it actually
- 41:37affect the design and vice versa?
- 41:39How does the design affect the model and how does the model
- 41:41affect the design? And because we have seen this a
- 41:45previous jobs when I push the model out and that Loop was
- 41:50missing that connecting pieces missing.
- 41:51So we spend months and months and months to train like a
- 41:54perfect model and then it was misunderstood by the us over the
- 41:58user not understanding what the implications of the modeler in
- 42:01the click the wrong buttons and the generated coverage data and
- 42:04like all of a sudden you're like aw damn it.
- 42:06And that's sort of like in my mind is often the one of the
- 42:09core pieces. Why machine when he fails is
- 42:12sort of like this integration with design and how do you real
- 42:15users interact with a machine? Like Mom's what are the real
- 42:18world consequences once the monitors are because like any
- 42:21system adopts to changes within the system and it's the same for
- 42:26machine learning. That's like a.
- 42:28Once you start predicting something people starting how
- 42:30can I tweak the system? Like, how can I turn this into
- 42:33my benefits and the other thing? Went I think it's odd.
- 42:38What we should talk more about like in the whole ml Ops
- 42:41Community, I think that the real machine learning happens once
- 42:45the model is trained for the first time.
- 42:48Like scaling machine learning models is a big, big deal and I
- 42:52think we still don't talk enough about that like it's not just
- 42:55about serving a machine learning model.
- 42:56But like scaling the the usage of the machine.
- 43:00I'm also recently, we we have a tremendous growth at digits.
- 43:04Like we already, we ingest Millions of transactions, every
- 43:10new transactions every day. Like this, like it's a perfect
- 43:13place for machine learning Engineers like it's small, it's
- 43:15like being a really good team but we have a lot of data.
- 43:19And so we often see like interesting things around like
- 43:24we have the model model deployed.
- 43:25This is all on auto scaling. We can we can scale those
- 43:28operations but then also we need to scale our pipelines in
- 43:31conjunction with our machine learning models in to get the
- 43:33optimal throughput. There that is a We interesting
- 43:37question right now, and I there's a lot of learnings on
- 43:42our end up like, how to scale machine learning how to get an
- 43:47optimal throughput through the systems after the most point?
- 43:53I had a quick quick dot here that I wanted to share first
- 43:56off. Are you guys hiring on the
- 43:57machine learning side because this is like a running
- 43:59advertisement. This is like, yeah, it's like a
- 44:03gradual rat. I long 45 in a glass door at for
- 44:06working at ditches, all positions from and back-end data
- 44:12engineering, machine learning anything.
- 44:14That's also. Okay, cool.
- 44:16Alright. Well, everyone now, you know
- 44:17what a higher and I know where to look to get hired.
- 44:22The second thing, And say is I think something I've been
- 44:26thinking about in my head as kind of been the evolution of
- 44:30our industry from working on ML models to products to systems.
- 44:36Right? And I think you know, between
- 44:40You know, twenty fifteen to Seventeen, right?
- 44:43Like maybe 18, like everything was all about like working on
- 44:46like fancy models, right? Like just putting out a new kind
- 44:50of deep learning model, or something like that, right?
- 44:52And now between 18 and maybe around 20 22 or so, like, we've
- 44:57started to think a little bit more like, okay.
- 44:58Well, what does it take to actually build an amount
- 45:00product, right? And I think we're still thinking
- 45:03about that and now with some of the more, some of the
- 45:06Integrations with data, engineering, some of the, some
- 45:09of the changes in data engineering.
- 45:10Themselves and software, engineering like the systems,
- 45:13the systems level engineering that you can do not just a
- 45:15Google and Facebook can do with oodles, and oodles of dollars
- 45:18and Engineers, but everybody can do it now, right?
- 45:20And that's what's really exciting to me is to see that
- 45:22and like, digits is an example of that.
- 45:25Absolutely, I think miss the machine learning field.
- 45:29We have this struggle right now than a lot of things for had to
- 45:32learn. A lot of things were sort of
- 45:34like marketing driven was like, Hey, we're in AI company, right?
- 45:39I think Like just because you produce a machine learning
- 45:42model, doesn't make it any I company.
- 45:45Like when you need to get to the systems point of the what you
- 45:48said like then I think we can say like yes this is an ml
- 45:52German company or like we're data-driven or like machine
- 45:55learning powered or something like this.
- 45:57But we have to get to the point of systems of the system's
- 46:00approach and just training. A machine learning model, just
- 46:04deploying this doesn't make it a system, it does make a system
- 46:08when like in Control Systems approach, like typical systems
- 46:13engineering. Like you have a black box, it
- 46:15gets an input against an output and then you have a control
- 46:18parameter in for our machine learning systems, that control
- 46:21parameter is a feedback loop. You need to give your users a
- 46:26way to give you feedback around your machine Learning System at
- 46:31any given point in time. So, for example, we have like in
- 46:34the product we have a tool which is sort of like, making
- 46:38recommendations of like We think this is from in your co-captain.
- 46:45The users can click on a little button and then see, why did we
- 46:49make that suggestion? So we built a machine learning,
- 46:52explain ability right into the product and it shows you like
- 46:56something where you really expect from sharp or shape.
- 46:59Sorry, I'm always mispronounce this cool.
- 47:02I'm like why in this particular spring?
- 47:05Why did L machine? What did our machine learning
- 47:07model fire on? and there's like directly
- 47:11integrated into the product and if people have a problem with
- 47:14that they can just click on a little button, we get a
- 47:16notification and we going to analyze the particular tool and
- 47:20we look at all the actions, use a users do based on our
- 47:24recommendations and that is the feedback loop only critical and
- 47:27all the thinking about them Ops So just piggybacking off of that
- 47:33design decision that you took to say, we're going to have
- 47:36explained ability built into our machine learning model.
- 47:39I imagine that is because of the conversations that you have with
- 47:43the designers. And I'm wondering if you have
- 47:46any more examples of how conversations with designers has
- 47:52changed the way that you have built machine, learning products
- 47:56have to admit. The design team is amazing.
- 47:58Like we have Wonderful designers and they have a very, very
- 48:02strong interest in machine learning.
- 48:04That's that is the first ingredient to like a really cool
- 48:07collaboration that the machine learning folks have.
- 48:10It is have an interest in design.
- 48:11I think this is happens naturally, like just because
- 48:14your eye is like working with you and your like, whenever you
- 48:17see new designers on this automatic appeal to like it.
- 48:21Check it out. And so, it's much harder for the
- 48:24design team to have an interest in the machine learning
- 48:26operations, under the use case of machine learning, but I think
- 48:30That happens automatically for the for the folks on the team.
- 48:33So that's really great. We will never have to drag them
- 48:36in the conversations. They're already like they're the
- 48:39part of the decision process and the conversations in terms of
- 48:42the actual conversations. I think that these conversations
- 48:46going both ways, like from the machine learning side, we have
- 48:51conversations around what type of feedback loops do we need?
- 48:56To make our machine learning model successful.
- 49:00And then the designers come back was like, hey, I think this is
- 49:03how we could integrate this into the ground like we coined the
- 49:08phrase of like we have this phrase of a living model and the
- 49:13design is basically like lifting the covers and like we give
- 49:19people a sneak peek into the brain of like what's actually
- 49:21happened behind the scenes photos of a model.
- 49:23So and those conversations Going both ways like from Informatica
- 49:28in all sizes, like, this is what we need and the designers of
- 49:31like hey this is what we could write.
- 49:33But also there's another thing. We're like, let's say you have
- 49:36an onboarding flow. The designers could come in with
- 49:39questions of like, hey do we actually need to ask this
- 49:43question into it during our onboarding or could be predicted
- 49:47in some way. We might not be always correct.
- 49:49But like, can we make this onboarding flow simpler?
- 49:52And this those are sometimes questions begin from the design
- 49:55team. And Then sometimes the answer is
- 49:57yes. And sometimes the answer is no,
- 49:59and its really good conversation and this is something what I've
- 50:02seen in. Other companies, sort of like
- 50:03missing where the designers are, not even aware of like what
- 50:06machine learning can provide to the design itself?
- 50:10But did you have to do specific, like data literacy, or machine
- 50:13learning literacy to get them up to speed?
- 50:16Or were they just interested in? They started coming to meetings.
- 50:20Where you all would interact it? Sorry.
- 50:24It's a little bit of bonus and so We are determined to we work
- 50:27and what we call workspace and The Works being that covers a
- 50:31particular feature. And in this feature would like,
- 50:33or in this works for him. We are paired a bunch of machine
- 50:36learning folks up here at with a designer and back-end and
- 50:39front-end NGO. So every time we meet we like we
- 50:41get a realistic view a couple times a week.
- 50:45Just on the side note link I think digits are some cool
- 50:47things around like how we organize things and how we work
- 50:50remotely but only that. So in that point we always have
- 50:55Like multiple touch points during the week when we actually
- 50:58get to talk to the designers and the designers, can we might talk
- 51:02on the side about like something machine learning related in the
- 51:05design is like, hey, wait a second, can be used to design,
- 51:07so that happens naturally. But then when we bring up a new
- 51:11new Concepts, like for example, similarity learning, what does
- 51:15it actually mean for the product?
- 51:17Then sometimes we have like in brown bag sessions and the
- 51:21designers always part of that. And they would learn about like
- 51:25This is, how does that actually work?
- 51:27And then this would like a natural conversation happens
- 51:29afterwards. Like how can we actually use
- 51:31those things in in the product? And so, those brown bag sessions
- 51:36happen at other companies, as well.
- 51:38Totally, but they usually just happen within the machine
- 51:41learning team to educate other machine learning engineers.
- 51:44And then they have to wait for the next holiday party to
- 51:46actually convey this message to to the design team.
- 51:51So this is so good man. And it really shows me the power
- 51:55of like that hybrid team layout. And how if you just get the
- 52:01ability for these teams to be able to interact in a nice way
- 52:06together, it's going to create beautiful things and it you're
- 52:10going to see pieces that you as machine learning engineer,
- 52:14you're very focused on subset of problems and when someone else
- 52:18comes with a different perspective, I'm sure.
- 52:21There's been a lot of times where they've opened up your
- 52:23eyes to how you can use something differently, or
- 52:26potentially you're teaching them, and then they come with
- 52:29questions. Like could we do this?
- 52:30Like you were talking about with the predicting the onboarding
- 52:33flow. So I love hearing about that.
- 52:36I also, I'm really like, I think that you have stated it so
- 52:43clearly the importance of like data hygiene and not just the
- 52:48machine learning level. Like if What you were talking
- 52:51about? That foundational level is not
- 52:53there, it doesn't matter how good of a machine learning team.
- 52:55You have, you're not going to be able to go places because you
- 52:59need that data hygiene on the very, very basis of the the
- 53:04whole pyramid or hierarchy of needs, right?
- 53:08So, I got one last question for you man before we jump off and
- 53:13it is a little bit of a rapid fire round.
- 53:15We could call it. What was the last book?
- 53:18You read? Because I see in the background,
- 53:20there's nothing but Riley books on your bookshelf, so you only
- 53:26see half of the books table. So there's a some yeah.
- 53:31None non already performed as well.
- 53:34What? So, what was the last one you
- 53:36read, though? O'Reilly or not?
- 53:37It doesn't matter as a technical book.
- 53:41I think what's currently on the nightstand is like, the atlas of
- 53:44the eye, is a really great introduction about like what are
- 53:49the consequences of In learning. Or in in parts, you might not
- 53:55have expected like environmental consequences, for example, may
- 53:58be consequences. Yeah.
- 54:00Like consequence, don't like politics democracy.
- 54:05Highly, highly eye-opening book. Like I highly highly recommend
- 54:10this this book and On the non on the fiction side been, if they
- 54:21hadn't carried a book for me with me for the last 20 years,
- 54:25just by unpacking in a box. The other day I found like a
- 54:30Fury from Salman Rushdie like before all the news happen.
- 54:36But that's basically on my nightstand is a fiction book
- 54:39right now. Incredibly nice.
- 54:42Last one for you. How do you want to be
- 54:44remembered? Ooh, that's a good one.
- 54:53Hmm. That's a good one.
- 54:57I would love to like I don't know something around like His
- 55:01jokes are City but they were funny, like they're odd, but
- 55:05funny that's something I could get behind.
- 55:09That's that is mine too. Well honest, man, this has been
- 55:14eye-opening and I appreciate the transparency.
- 55:18And the level of just openness that, you've been able to get to
- 55:22with us. I love when were able to pick
- 55:24someone's brain and there, they tell us everything.
- 55:26You broke down your whole stack, maybe later on, we will create
- 55:29some kind of diagram. The listeners out there and have
- 55:34it like what your stack looks like and and I just think it's
- 55:38fascinating. This idea, there's two huge
- 55:41things that I loved one was the data hygiene and the other was
- 55:45like have a baseline model in place before you go and you do
- 55:49your deep learning like really cool, Cutting Edge stuff.
- 55:52Make sure that you have your bases in check, so this has been
- 55:57awesome. Visually you got any last?
- 55:59Final, thoughts. Closing thoughts?
- 56:01People. Go work at digits, man.
- 56:02Go work at this. That's all I got.
- 56:05Is it? That's it.
- 56:06We'll leave the yeah, exactly. We'll leave that careers page
- 56:11four digits in the description in case anyone wants to go and
- 56:14apply. It is a good place, indeed, and
- 56:18if anybody has questions around the stack and how we solve
- 56:21problems, feel free to reach out, we happy to answer them.
- 56:24That's another thing about machine learning, you can, I
- 56:26think you can be really open about, like, what is actually
- 56:28happening behind the scenes because even then, it's To
- 56:31replicate the things for folks because you don't have the data.
- 56:35So it's like yeah. And there's a lot of like
- 56:38learnings we can share with other people and they can apply
- 56:41them to their business problems. Because at the end of the day,
- 56:44we trying to solve business problems, not like writing pens
- 56:47papers, and we have to share information.
- 56:51So feel free to reach out. Yeah.
- 56:55Last call to action for everyone.
- 56:56Listening, go and check out his book.
- 56:59Building machine learning pipelines.
- 57:01And we will also leave a link to that in the description.
- 57:05That's all we've got for today. Thank you for having me.
- 57:07Was that was a blast.