AI Study Group: July 2024

Despite the illness of the planned speaker, two guest speakers kindly agreed to present to us last-minute.

Deep Dive: Responsible and Unbiased GenAI for Computer Vision, by Daniel Gural

Dan showed us how Generative AI participates in computer vision technology and methodology, especially how GenAI can easily extend traditional capabilities of image augmentation ( to super resolution, inpainting, … ). He explained how inpainting is used to protect privacy. Dan also showed examples of geometry aware augmentation.
He demonstrated examples of generative datasets easily blending into any class of datasets.
He made us aware of the imperfections of current models in regard to bias, and methods of dealing with this problem. He also alerted us to the consequences of uncontrolled removal or addition of artifacts, particularly to medical images. He prepared an excellent talk, and we enjoyed the technical approach to the theme.

Introduction to Apache Kafka, by Stefan Radu

Stefan’s talk was about a big change that he experienced companies going through in his day to day job as a Software Consultant

• About how companies manage their data
• The resulting ETL technology that they use
• The rise of real-time data and stream processing is driving that change

Main points:

• How things work today
• What are the drawbacks
• What is this new shiny future for ETL look like
• What role does Kafka play