The Non-Technical Guide to Machine Learning & Artificial Intelligence
I have a challenge for you.
In a few seconds, I want you to stop reading this article, and follow the instructions below.
Here you go:
1. Visit your your favorite source for Tech news (Twitter, Hacker News, Term Sheet, reddit, TechCrunch, Mattermark Daily, CB Insights, etc.)
2. Hit “crtl + f”
3. Search “artificial intelligence” or “machine learning”
4. If you don't find any matches, publicly shame me on Twitter.
I hope my point is obvious.
Machine learning and artificial intelligence (ML and AI) have seized Tech mindshare in a way few topics have in recent memory. A couple months ago I noticed people talking about artificial intelligence everywhere I looked. According to AI experts, everything from our jobs, to the wars we wage, to the food we eat, to the beer we drink, to the software we write will be affected.
Not being one to enjoy surprises, I decided to spend my free time learning as much about the space (and what the future holds) as possible. ML and AI are having a huge impact on our lives, and their roles are only increasing. The better informed you are, the better prepared you’ll be to handle these changes as they happen.
Rather than sit here and pretend I know everything there is to know about ML and AI, I’m going to hand you the resources I use to educate myself.
I hope you will use them too.
How to Use This List
There is already a ton of technical content being produced about artificial intelligence and machine learning. This list is a primer for non-technical people who want to understand what machine learning makes possible.
To develop a deep understanding of the space, reading won’t be enough. You need to: have an understanding of the entire landscape, spot and use ML-enabled products in your daily life (Spotify recommendations), discuss artificial intelligence more regularly, and make friends with people who know more than you do about AI and ML.
News: For starters, I’ve included a link to a weekly artificial intelligence email that Avi Eisenberger and I curate (🤖Subscribe to Machine Learnings🤖). Start here if you want to develop a better understanding of the space, but don’t have the time to actively hunt for machine learning and artificial intelligence news.
Startups: It’s nice to see what startups are doing, and not only hear about the money they are raising. I’ve included links to the websites and apps of 307+ machine intelligence companies and tools.
People: Here’s a good place to jump into the conversation. I’ve provided links to Twitter accounts (and LinkedIn profiles and personal websites in their absence) of the founders, investors, writers, operators and researchers who work in and around the machine learning space.
Events: If you enjoy getting out from behind your computer, and want to meet awesome people who are interested in artificial intelligence in real life, there is one place that’s best to do that, more on my favorite place below.
Quick Navigation Links:
Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence News Sources
✉️Weekly Emails:
A Weekly Roundup of ML & AI News. Machine Learning and AI are having a huge impact on our lives. Our mission is to…subscribe.machinelearnings.co
🖥 Websites:
Find new ideas and classic advice for global leaders from the world's best business and management experts.hbr.org
A.I. Experiments is a showcase of simple experiments that let anyone play with artificial intelligence and machine…aiexperiments.withgoogle.com
Everything pertaining to the technological singularity and related topics, e.g. AI, human enhancement, etc.www.reddit.com
The latest insights, ideas, and tools for building solutions that rely on machine intelligence.www.oreilly.com
Get the latest independent tech news, reviews and analysis from Recode with the most informed and respected journalists…www.recode.net
Read the latest about artificial intelligence from a16z investors.a16z.com
Stitch Fix is a full-stack startup creating unique solutions in data-driven merchandising, massively scaled personal…multithreaded.stitchfix.com
The Economist offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science…www.economist.com
The mission of MIT Technology Review is to equip its audiences with the intelligence to understand a world shaped by…www.technologyreview.com
The idea of cybersecurity as a digital immune system is an apt metaphor. We can't block everything, but we have to deal…medium.com
Get the latest news coming out of the top tech companies including Apple, Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter and…www.bloomberg.com
Edit Amazing how technological change can transform the way countries interrelate, develop, and pursue security at home and abroad. www.csis.org
In a speech today at Web Summit, Facebook CTO Mike Schroepfer laid out a vision for the role artificial intelligence…techcrunch.com
The Perlan glider and 9 more of this year's amazing aerospace innovationswww.popsci.com
Science news and science articles from New Scientistwww.newscientist.com
Get in-depth coverage of current and future trends in technology, and how they are shaping business, entertainment…www.wired.com
The ability to learn from experience will likely be a key in enabling robots to help with complex real-world tasks…research.googleblog.com
Innovation and Startups at the Intersection of Technology and www.techemergence.com
Traces of civilization's impact on our planet are everywhere. Global warming, mass extinctions, and the proliferation…www.slate.com
Find breaking news, tech news and multimedia on the Internet, telecommunications, wireless applications, electronics…www.nytimes.com
Chatbots, AI, NLP, Facebook Messenger, Slack, Telegram, and more.chatbotsmagazine.com
Mining the tech world for lively, meaningful tales. Part of WIRED Media Group.backchannel.com
Neural networks are the workhorse of many of the algorithms developed at DeepMind. For example, AlphaGo uses…deepmind.com
The Next Web is one of the world's largest online publications that delivers an international perspective on the latest…thenextweb.com
Explore the cutting-edge work Google is doing in machine learning.blog.google
Under President Obama's leadership, America continues to be the world's most innovative country, with the greatest…www.whitehouse.gov
Machine Intelligence Startups & Tools
One of the major promises of AI is freeing people from mindless tasks, so they can do more meaningful work. When we’re not writing posts about AI, we’re building Journal to help you see and search your private work information, all in one place. Get Early Access
Shivon Zilis and James Cham, who invest in machine learning-related companies for Bloomberg Beta, recently created a machine intelligence market landscape.
Below, you can find links to the 317+ companies in the landscape (and a few more), and play around with some apps that are applying machine learning in interesting ways.
Enterprise Intelligence
😎Visual
Algocian
Captricity
Clarifai
Cortica
Deepomatic
DeepVision
Netra
Orbital Insight
Planet
Spaceknow
👂Audio
Capio
Clover Intelligence
Gridspace
MindMeld
Mobvoi
Nexidia
Pop Up Archive
Quirious.ai
TalkIQ
Twilio
🔋Sensor
Alluvium
C3 IoT
Planet OS
Maana
KONUX
Imubit
GE Predix
ThingWorx
Uptake
Sentenai
Preferred Networks
🗄Internal Data
Deckard.ai
Digital Reasoning
IBM Watson
Kyndi
Databricks
Sapho
📈Market
Bottlenose
CB Insights
DataFox
Enigma
Intelligent Layer
Mattermark
Predata
Premise
Quid
Tracxn
Enterprise Functions
☎️Customer Support
ActionIQ
Clarabridge
Eloquent Labs
Kasisto
Preact
Wise.io
Zendesk
💸Sales
6sense
AppZen
Aviso
Clari
Collective[i]
Fusemachines
InsideSales
Salesforce Einstein
Zensight
📣Marketing
AirPR
BrightFunnel
CogniCor
Lattice
LiftIgniter
Mintigo
msg.ai
Persado
Radius
Retention Science
🚨Security
Cylance
Darktrace
Deep Instinct
Demisto
Drawbridge Networks
Graphistry
LeapYear
SentinelOne
SignalSense
Zimperium
🤗Recruiting
Entelo
Algorithmia
HiQ
HireVue
SpringRole
Textio
Unitive
Wade & Wendy
Autonomous Systems
🚘Ground Navigation
AdasWorks
Auro Robotics
Drive.ai
Google
Mobileye
nuTonomy
Tesla
Uber
Zoox
✈️Aerial
Airware
DJI
DroneDeploy
Lily
Pilot AI Labs
Shield AI
Skycatch
Skydio
🏭Industrial
Clearpath Robotics
Fetch Robotics
Harvest Automation
JaybridgeRobotics
Kindred AI
Osaro
Rethink Robotics
Agents
🕵️Personal
Amazon Alexa
Apple Siri
Facebook M
Google Now/Allo
Microsoft Cortana
Replika
📅Professional
Deckard.ai
SkipFlag
Slack
Sudo
Talla
x.ai
Zoom.ai
Industries
🐮Agriculture
Abundant Robotics
AgriData
Blue River Technology
Descartes Labs
Mavrx
Pivot Bio
TerrAvion
Trace Genomics
Tule
UDIO
🎓Education
AltSchool
Content Technologies (CTI)
Coursera
Gradescope
Knewton
Volley
🏦Investment
AlphaSense
Bloomberg
Cerebellum Capital
Dataminr
iSentium
Kensho
Quandl
Sentient
🏛Legal
Beagle
Blue J Legal
Legal Robot
Ravel Law
ROSS Intelligence
Seal
📦Transportation/Logistics
Acerta
ClearMetal
Marble
NAUTO
PitStop
Preteckt
Routific
🛢Materials
Calculario
Citrine
Eigen Innovations
Ginkgo Bioworks
Nanotronics
Sight Machine
Zymergen
👜Retail Finance
Affirm
Betterment
Earnest
Lendo
Mirador
Tala (a InVenture)
Wealthfront
ZestFinance
Healthcare
🤕Patient
Atomwise
CareSkore
Deep6 Analytics
IBM Watson Health
Numerate Medical
Oncora
pulseData
Sentrian
Zephyr Health
🖼Image
3Scan
Arterys
Bay Labs
Butterfly Network
Enlitic
Google DeepMind
Imagia
🔬Biological
Atomwise
Color Genomics
Deep Genomics
Grail
iCarbonX
Luminist
Numerate
Recursion Pharmaceuticals
Verily
Whole Biome
Technology Stack
💬Agent & Conversational Interfaces
Automat
Howdy
Kasisto
KITT.AI
Maluuba
Octane AI
OpenAI Gym
Semantic Machines
💯Data Science
Ayasdi
BigML
Dataiku
DataRobot
Domino Data Lab
Kaggle
RapidMiner
Seldon
🤖Machine Learning
Bonsai
ScaleContext
Relevant
Cycorp
Datacratic
deepsense.io
Geometric Intelligence
H2O.ai
HyperScience
Loop AI Labs
minds.ai
Nara LogicsReactive
Scaled Inference
Skymind
SparkCognition
💬Natural Language
Agolo
AYLIEN
Cortical.io
Lexalytics
Loop AI Labs
Luminoso
MonkeyLearn
Narrative Science
spaCy
🖥Development
Deckard.ai
Fuzzy.ai
Hyperopt
Kite
Layer 6 AI
Lobe.ai
RainforestQA
SignifAI
SigOpt
📊Data Capture
Amazon Mechanical Turk
CrowdAI
CrowdFlower
Datalogue
DataSift
diffbot
Enigma
Import.io
Paxata
Trifacta
WorkFusion
📚Open Source Libraries
Amazon DSSTNE
Apache Spark
Azure ML
Baidu
Caffe Chainer
DeepLearning4j
H2O.ai
Keras
Microsoft CNTK
Microsoft DMTK
MLlib
MXNet
Nervana Neon
PaddlePaddle
scikit-learn
TensorFlow
Theano
Torch7
Weka
🛠Hardware
1026 Labs
Cadence
Cirrascale
Google TPU
Intel (Nervana)
Isocline
KNUPATH
NVIDIA DGX-1/Titan X
Qualcomm Tenstorrent
Tensilica
📊Research
Cogitai
Kimera
Knoggin
NNAISENSE
Numenta
OpenAI
Vicarious
People to Know in Machine Learning and AI
I think AI is probably the single biggest item in the near-term that’s likely to affect humanity — Elon Musk
Andrew Ng Chief Scientist of Baidu; Chairman and Co-Founder of Coursera; Stanford CS faculty.
Sam Altman President, YC Group, OpenAI co-chairman.
Harry Shum EVP, Microsoft AI and Research.
Geoffrey Hinton The godfather of deep learning.
Samiur Rahman CEO of Journal. Former Data Engineering Lead at Mattermark.
Jeff Dean Google Senior Fellow at Google, Inc. Co-founder and leader of Google’s deep learning research and engineering team.
Eric Horvitz Technical Fellow at Microsoft Research
Denny Britz Deep Learning at Google Brain.
Tom Mitchell Computer scientist and E. Fredkin University Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University.
Chris Dixon General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Hilary Mason Founder at FastForwardLabs. Data Scientist in Residence at Accel.
Elon Musk Tesla Motors, SpaceX, SolarCity, PayPal & OpenAI.
Kirk Borne The Principal Data Scientist at Booz Allen, PhD Astrophysicist.
Peter Skomoroch Co-Founder & CEO SkipFlag. Previously Principal Data Scientist at LinkedIn, Engineer at AOL.
Paul Barba Chief Scientist at Lexalytics.
Andrej Karpathy Research scientist at OpenAI. Previously CS PhD student at Stanford.
Monica Rogati Former VP of Data Jawbone & LinkedIn data scientist.
Xavier Amatriain Leading Engineering at Quora. Netflix alumni.
Mike Gualtieri Forrester VP & Principal Analyst.
Fei-Fei Li Professor of Computer Science, Stanford University, Director of Stanford AI Lab.
David Silver Royal Society University Research Fellow.
Nando de Freitas Professor of Computer ScienceFellow, Linacre College.
Roberto Cipolla Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge.
Gabe Brostow Associate Professor in Computer Science at London’s Global University.
Arthur Gretton Associate Professor with the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit.
Ingmar Posner University Lecturer in Engineering Science at the University of Oxford.
Pieter Abbeel Associate Professor, UC Berkeley, EECS. Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research (BAIR) laboratory. UC Berkeley Center for Human Compatible AI. Co-Founder Gradescope.
Josh Wills Slack Data Engineering and Apache Crunch committer.
Noah Weiss Head of Search, Learning, & Intelligence at Slack in NYC. Former SVP of Product at foursquare + Google PM on structured search.
Michael E. Driscoll Founder, CEO Metamarkets. Investor at Data Collective
Drew Conway Founder and CEO of Alluvium.
Sean Taylor Facebook Data Science Team
Demis Hassabis Co-Founder & CEO, DeepMind.
Randy Olson Senior Data Scientist at Penn Institute for Biomedical Informatics.
Shivon Zilis Partner at Bloomberg Beta where she focuses on machine intelligence companies.
Adam Gibson Founder of Skymind.
Alexandra Suich Technology reporter for The Economist.
Anthony Goldblum Co-founder and CEO of Kaggle.
Avi Goldfarb Professor at Rotman, University of Toronto and the Chief Data Scientist at Creative Destruction Lab.
Ben Lorica Chief Data Scientist of O'Reilly Media, and Program Director of O’Reilly Strata & O’ReillyAI conferences. Ben hosts the O’Reilly Data Show Podcast too.
Chris Nicholson Co-founder Deeplearning4j & Skymind. Previous to that, Chris worked at The New York Times.
Doug Fulop Product manager at Kindred.ai.
Dror Berman Founder, Innovation Endeavors.
Dylan Tweney Founder of @TweneyMedia, former EIC @venturebeat, ex-@WIRED, publisher of @tinywords.
Gary Kazantsev R&D Machine Learning at Bloomberg LP.
Gideon Mann Head of Data Science / CTO Office at Bloomberg LP.
Gordon Ritter Cloud investor at Emergence Capital, cloud entrepreneur.
Jack Clark Strategy and Communications Director OpenAI. Past: @business World’s Only Neural Net Reporter. @theregister Distributed Systems Reporter.
Federico Pascual COO & Co-Founder, MonkeyLearn.
Matt Turck VC at FirstMark Capital and the organizer of Data Driven NYC and Hardwired NYC.
Nick Adams Data Scientist, Berkeley Institute for Data Science.
Roger Magoulas Research Director, O’Reilly Media.
Sean Gourley Former CEO, Quid.
Shruti Gandhi Array.VC, previously at True & Samsung Ventures.
Steve Jurvetson Partner at Draper Fisher Jurvetson.
Vijay Sundaram Venture Capitalist Innovation Endeavors, Tinkerer Polkadot Labs.
Zavain Dar VC Lux Capital, Lecturer Stanford University, Moneyball Philadelphia 76ers.
Yann Lecun Director of AI Research, Facebook. Founding Director of the NYU Center for Data Science
Sarah Catanzaro Investor @canvasvc; former Data Lead @Mattermark.
Paul Hsiao AI + Marketplace Investor @CanvasVC.
Dennis Mortensen CEO and founder of x.ai.
Pedro Domingos. Professor of computer science at UW and author of ‘The Master Algorithm’.
Ryan Dawidjan.Product Team, Clarifai.
Russ Salakhutdinov. Professor at Carnegie Mellon University.
Aerin Kim. Unapologetic abuser of the machine BYOR.
Lucy Wang. Data Scientist, VC Greycroft Partners, MS NYU Center for Data Science.
Miles Brundage. AI Policy Research Fellow, Future of Humanity Institute, Oxford. PhD candidate, Human and Social Dimensions of Science and Technology, ASU.
Rizwan Habib. Founder & Organizer, New York Artificial Intelligence (NYAI).
Andreas Mueller. Lecturer at the Columbia Data Science Institute.
Roger Chen Program Chair, O’Reilly Artificial Intelligence Conference.
Jason Yosinski Machine Learning Scientist at Geometric Intelligence.
Soumith Chintala Artificial Intelligence Research Engineer at Facebook.
Suchi Saria Assistant Professor at Johns Hopkins University. Expertise in machine learning, streaming data and health informatics.
Rob McInerney Founder and CEO of Intelligent Layer. PhD in Machine Learning at Oxford University.
Peter Norvig Research Director at Google.
Sebastian Thrun CEO of Udacity and part-time research professor of computer science at Stanford.
Zoubin Ghahramani Researcher and Professor of Information Engineering at the University of Cambridge.
Daphne Koller Professor of Computer Science at Stanford, Co-Founder of Coursera.
Amir Banifatemi Leads and provides thought leadership for the Global IBM Watson Artificial Intelligence Xprize prize.
Frank Chen Partner at Andreessen Horowitz.
Lili Cheng General Manager, Fuse Labs, Microsoft Research.
Shane Legg Chief Scientist and Co-Founder, Deepmind.
Mustafa Suleyman Co-founder of Deepmind.
Nathan Benaich Investor at Playfair Capital.
Artificial Intelligence and ML Events
I’ve written previously about my (lack of) love for networking events.
NYAI has managed to rise above the noise and organize ~1,500 researchers, students, founders, and investors who are genuinely awesome people.
The impacts that machine learning and AI have on our world will not be felt in isolation. These changes will affect all of us. NYAI’s monthly events are the best way, that I’ve found so far, to learn about, collaborate on and network over emerging trends in artificial intelligence.
Did I miss any awesome people/companies/resources? Let me know on Twitter!
Thanks to Rizwan Habib for co-authoring this post and to Nick Frost, Andy Sparks, Avi Eisenberger, Jason Cohen, Rob McInerney and Dakota McKenzie for reading and talking through earlier drafts.
