Blog - XNV

Our blog

The path to putting your ML model in production

Is it a good idea to run data centers underwater?19 November, 2020

There are major infrastructural challenges in running large scale data centers. One is providing sufficient electric power to keep the facility running. A datacenter running tens of thousands of servers consumes roughly 10 Megawatts of power. Servers not only consume vast amounts of energy, they also generate a lot of heat. The air inside a data center will become sweltering unless you cool it down. Servers cannot function reliably in high temperatures. The cooling solution needs to be both hi

Adriano Marques

Multi-task learning: Solving different computer vision problems with a single model12 November, 2020

In the last few years, significant improvements in computer vision were made, making it possible to obtain important information from images. Some of the challenges for a better understanding of a scene are the detection of people and the recognition of the activities they are performing. In this post, I'm going to show a method that I proposed to do a single end-to-end model able to detect people, estimate their pose, and recognize each one of their activities by their pose. Figure 1: Result

Deep Learning and the fear of frauds24 November, 2020

Soon we might live in a world where one can never be sure that video and voice recording is real, no matter how realistic it looks and sounds. Deep learning methods are used with artificial neural networks to create what is known as deepfakes – visual and audio content that, to the naked eye, looks absolutely real. The potential uses of deepfakes are limited only by the imagination of people who have access to the technology required to manufacture them. As technology advances, the tools for cr

Adriano Marques

Introduction to Serverless on AWS04 November, 2020

Brief introduction on the concepts of creating a basic API using a serverless approach hosted on AWS.

Overview on the current state of 3D Printing05 November, 2020

3D printing used to be mostly the realm of hobbyists. As the technology evolved, it became an essential manufacturing method for many industries. Several cars today have 3D printed parts. 3D printing has enabled many startups to bring their products to market. For example, in one of his interviews, George Hotz who started a company to produce a gadget that makes virtually any car self-driving, mentioned that the casings for the gadgets are 3D printed in the company’s office. The most widely use

Adriano Marques

Are you ready for your Neuralink Brain Implant?30 October, 2020

Human brain consumes incredibly low amounts of energy, has great longevity, and requires little maintenance. No man-made computing hardware comes even close to a human brain in these qualities. Right now, the brain is mostly a black box to us. We know verry little about how it works. As of yet, scientists have had a limited toolset to study the inner workings of a human brain. Devices that interface with the brain could help us better understand it, repair, and possibly improve it. The most pr

Adriano Marques

The Current State of Self-Driving Technology30 September, 2020

The advances of technology in our world have continued to increase and self-driving cars are the next logical step for our society. This poses a fundamental question: do we know how safe autonomous vehicles can be? SAE International is an organization who describes a categorization for "levels of driving automation". It defines six levels of automation for cars, ranging from Level 0 (no driving automation) to Level 5 (full automation), transitioning gradually from "driver support features" to "

Adriano Marques

I heard that you're playing with SEO27 October, 2020

Hey people, hello again, this time we're going to talk about SEO 📈📊 In this article I'll walk with you through the path I followed to improve the visibility of this blog you're accessing right now. A bit of context... This is a Gatsby + Ghost blog, and as you may know, it is a static site. Gatsby generates the bundle and we keep our posts on Ghost. Gatsby access these posts using the awesome Ghost Source Plugin [https://www.gatsbyjs.com/plugins/gatsby-source-ghost] and we deploy the bundle on

Mineral Mining and Blockchains - a good example of blockchain use outside of cryptocurrencies.30 October, 2020

Blockchain became a buzz word by 2017, made famous by the single-use case that for many people seemed almost synonymous with Blockchain –Bitcoin. The question on people's minds was: "What is blockchain, and how can I make money with it?" What really drew attention was the valuation of a single Bitcoin hitting an astonishing $20,000 in December 2017, a peak that it has not been able to climb again after rolling back down to $3,000 within a year. But the blockchain rush was on. Investors were fr

Adriano Marques

Ranking labs-of-origin for genetically engineered DNA using Metric Learning23 October, 2020

With the constant advancements of genetic engineering, a common concern is to be able to identify the lab-of-origin of genetically engineered DNA sequences. For that reason, AltLabs has hosted the Genetic Engineering Attribution Challenge to gather many teams to propose new tools to solve this problem. Here we show our proposed method that aims to rank the most likely labs-of-origin and generate embeddings for DNA sequences and labs. These embeddings can also be used to perform various other tas

Fernando Camargo

7 common mistakes of a machine learning beginner15 October, 2020

In recent years, the term Artificial Intelligence has gained strength and together with it have emerged some professions such as Data Scientist and Machine Learning Engineer. Knowing and applying machine learning is attractive and appears to be the path to success. However this path can be troubled and especially discouraging for those who are just starting out. Over the years working as a Data Scientist and Machine Learning Researcher, I have witnessed several common mistakes that made life di

AI Infrastructure Alternatives for your Business13 October, 2020

With cloud offerings becoming more abundant and diverse, cloud infrastructure seems to offer a much cheaper and simpler alternative to an on-premises data center. Many organizations, that need Artificial Intelligence to help with decision-making, problem-solving, etc. face a complicated decision: what is the best infrastructure deployment for AI workloads? Generally speaking, there are three possible deployment options. You can run your AI on-premises in your own datacenter, rent some space at

Adriano Marques

Angular Applications at Scale07 October, 2020

In this article, we'll look at how to build large Angular applications. I'll discuss techniques that will help you keep your project scalable, maintainable and robust.

What Kind of AI Infrastructure is Best for my Business?30 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the various infrastructure alternatives available when it comes to training and deployment of Artificial Intelligence models. Between Cloud, Colocation, and On-Premise which one would you say is the best infrastructure for your AI needs? Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opinion in the live chat. - Adriano Marques is the founder and CEO of Exponen

Adriano Marques

Docker for beginners23 September, 2020

Hello you all, in this article I'll try to explain the concepts of Docker and how you can dockerize your app with no suffering, so leeeeeet's go 🤓 -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Objective The objective of this article is to provide you the actions needed to get an up and running application with Docker and docker-compose. You'll also learn how to upload and download it from local registries and the almighty Dockerhub. Have fun. ------------

Are there any real-world application of Blockchains outside of Cryptocurrencies?21 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, we have a special guest discussing with us some real-world applications of Blockchains outside of Cryptocurrencies and whether those applications are really using and benefitting from this technology. Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opinion in the live chat. - Adriano Marques is the founder and CEO of Exponential Ventures. - Nathan Martins is a Machine Learning/DevOps Engineer at Exponential Ventures, where he works on projects t

Adriano Marques

The Eight Challenges You'll Face With On-Premise Artificial Intelligence16 September, 2020

As glamorous as it is to have your own Artificial Intelligence Optimized On-Premise Data Center, it doesn't come easy. It is absolutelly true that if done right it boasts much better performance and much lower costs than resorting to the cloud or even using co-location to perform your processing workload when creating AI driven solutions. However, most people are not aware of what really makes an AI Optimized Data Center and end up building an expensive half-baked solution that can't perform o

Adriano Marques

My journey so far17 September, 2020

My journey at Exponential Ventures started mid-2019 when I flew 7000 km to Exponential Venture’s headquarters in Chicago. During my first day of work at the HQ, I met the team members, saw their data center with several servers and XNV’s (that's how we abbreviate the company's name) lab where there is a laser cutter, 3D printers, and a CNC machine. Right at the beginning two of my beliefs changed: Machine Learning (ML) is easy and cheap and Python has a weird syntax that I will hate it forever.

Is the cloud moving to the sea?16 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about Microsoft's Project codenamed Natick which was an attempt of sustainably running a Data Center underwater. After 2 years of deployment, Microsoft is claiming that their servers were up to 8 times more reliable than their counterparts on land. Is that an indication that the cloud is actually moving to the sea? Come join us and participate by asking questions or giving your opini

Adriano Marques

How safe are self-driving cars?09 September, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the safety of current self-driving technology. Despite the fact that there are very few cars on the road today capable of self-driving in all conditions, most new cars are already incorporating some of that technology and soon we'll be trusting our lives to it. Whether or not you're ready give up on your steering wheel we think that you'll enjoy this discussion. Come join us an

Adriano Marques

Should I start saving for my neuralink implant?31 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the recently unveiled neuralink, a Brain-Machine interface developed by the company with the same name founded by Elon Musk.

Adriano Marques

When will I be able to 3D Print my products from home?20 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about the promises of 3D Printing, that are yet to be fulfilled, of a future in which we'll be able to download models of products and 3D Print.

Adriano Marques

Is the World going to be Deceived by Deepfakes?17 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat addressing a common concern about Deep Fakes deceiving the world with ultra realistic images, videos, and voice synthesis.

Adriano Marques

How can I differentiate Artificial Intelligence from everything else?07 August, 2020

In next week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about how Artificial Intelligence is defined with some practical examples and easy tips on how to distinguish AI from everything else.

Adriano Marques

GPT-3: Is this the beginning of Skynet?05 August, 2020

In this week's Exponential Chats, some of the team members responsible for Amalgam's development will have a chat about Open AI's recently announced language model GPT-3.

Adriano Marques

Top 6 Engineering Challenges for Machine Learning12 June, 2020

It is already 2020, and on top of a pandemic and civil unrest, our Machine Learning community still has to face challenges when working their way through creating models to solve the world's problems.

Adriano Marques