AI Articles Weekly Series

This week’s series of AI articles is from Dinesh Asanka, an 8x Microsoft MVP in SQL Server. He has been working with SQL Server for more than 15 years, written articles and co-authored books. Dinesh is a presenter at various user groups and universities.

 

Introduction to Azure Machine Learning using Azure ML Studio

Data Cleansing in Azure Machine Learning

Prediction in Azure Machine Learning

Feature Selection in Azure Machine Learning

Data Reduction Technique: Principal Component Analysis in Azure Machine Learning

Prediction with Regression in Azure Machine Learning

Prediction with Classification in Azure Machine Learning

Comparing models in Azure Machine Learning

Cross Validation in Azure Machine Learning

Clustering in Azure Machine Learning

Tune Model Hyperparameters for Azure Machine Learning models

Time Series Anomaly Detection in Azure Machine Learning

Designing Recommender Systems in Azure Machine Learning

Language Detection in Azure Machine Learning with basic Text Analytics Techniques

Azure Machine Learning: Named Entity Recognition in Text Analytics

Filter based Feature Selection in Text Analytics

Latent Dirichlet Allocation in Text Analytics

Recommender Systems for Customer Reviews

AutoML in Azure Machine Learning

AutoML in Azure Machine Learning for Regression and Time Series

Building Ensemble Classifiers in Azure Machine Learning

 

Oct '21 Technical Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• Sep 27: Akron AITP (https://akron-aitp.org/)
• Oct 5: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• Oct 20: Hudson CodeCraft (https://www.meetup.com/hudson-codecraft/)
• Oct 21 : GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• Oct 28: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 

 

Virtual Conferences

• Oct 16: Northern VA Code Camp (https://novacodecamp.org/)
• Oct 19: Global AI Back Together – Cleveland (https://globalai.community/global-ai-back-together/north-america-cleveland-4472/)
• Oct 26-28: AI Dev World (https://aidevworld.com/)
• Oct 29-31: Azure Community Conference (https://azconf.dev/)
• Nov 8-12: PASS Data Community Summit (https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/)

 

Azure Custom Vision Object Detection

Computer Vision and Custom Vision are 2 subsets of services provided by Azure Cognitive Services.

 

Computer Vision: Analyze content in images.

1. OCR: Optical Character Recognition
2. Image Analysis: extracts visual features from images (objects, faces)
3. Spatial Analysis: Analyzes the presence and movement of people on a video feed and produces events that other systems can respond to.

 

Custom Vision: Customize image recognition to fit your business needs.

1. Image Classification: applies label(s) to an image
2. Object Detection: returns coordinates in image where applied label(s) can be found.

 

When using the Object Detection Prediction API, the response returned from azure will be a JSON dataset using the following format.

 

    public class PredictionResponse

    {

        public string id { get; set; }

        public string project { get; set; }

        public string iteration { get; set; }

        public string created { get; set; }

        public Prediction[] predictions { get; set; }

    }

 

    public class Prediction

    {

        public string tagId { get; set; }

        public string tagName { get; set; }

        public string probability { get; set; }

        public BoundingBox boundingBox { get; set; }

    }

 

    public class BoundingBox

    {

        public string left { get; set; }

        public string top { get; set; }

        public string width { get; set; }

        public string height { get; set; }

    }

 

Each BoundingBox object in the response is represented graphically by the red boxes, as shown in the sample image below

 

 

 

In addition, listed below are some Gotcha’s to watch out for when working with Object Detection

 

1. Be sure to use the same login for https://customvision.ai as the one used for the Azure portal.

 

2. Use same "Directory" in CustomVision.ai and Azure portal.  This setting can be found in the top right corner for both Azure portal and CustomVision.ai

 

3. When training the model, you must use a minimum of 15 images for every tag.  More images with different lighting, angles, and backgrounds will produce better results.

 

4. The images types used for training must be .JPG, .PNG, or .BMP, and less than 4MB.

 

 

 

.Net Release Schedule

There has been some confusion created with the release of .Net and .Net Core releases and how their support will be impacted in the near future.  Listed below is a summary from the Microsoft Support Policy:

.NET and .NET Core refer to several technologies including the runtime, ASP.NET Core, Entity Framework Core, and more.
.NET Core and future versions of .NET provide Long Term Support (LTS) releases that get three years of patches and free support.
Patches to releases are compatible, which eliminates risk adversely affecting applications.

For details, see the .NET and .NET Core support policy.

 

Version	Original Release Date	Latest Patch Version	Patch Release Date	Support Level	End of Support
.NET 5	November 10, 2020	5.0.10	September 14, 2021	Current	6 months after .NET 6 release (around May 2022)
.NET Core 3.1	December 3, 2019	3.1.19	September 14, 2021	LTS	December 3, 2022

 

 

For better visualization of the .Net roadmap, see the timeline below for release dates of past, present, and future releases.

 

A day of data and AI

O’Reilly Radar presents a day of data and AI that will showcase what’s new, what’s important, and what’s coming in the field. It’s free and open to the public.

The event is happening October 14 and again on October 21.  It's free, but registration is required.

RSVP here for October 14, 7:00am–10:30am PT / 10:00am–1:30pm ET

RSVP here for October 21, 8:30am–12:00pm IST / 2:00pm–5:30pm AET

 

Sep '21 Technical Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• Aug 27: Cleveland OWASP (https://www.meetup.com/owasp-cleveland-group/)
• Sep 7: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• Sep 15: Hudson CodeCraft (https://www.meetup.com/hudson-codecraft/)
• Sep 16 : GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• Sep 23: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 
• Sep 27: Akron AITP User Group (https://www.meetup.com/AkronAITP/events/)

 

Virtual Conferences

• Sep 15-17: Music City Tech (https://musiccitytech.com/)
• Oct 29-31: Azure Community Conference (https://azconf.dev/)
• Nov 8-12: PASS Data Community Summit (https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/)

 

AI Articles

SQLServerCentral.com is a well known web site for knowledge sharing on all things SQL Server related, as well as other DB technologies.  It’s a community driven web site that publishes a daily newsletter with articles from their contributors, as well as contributors on other web sites.  Since data is the basis for machine learning and AI, the newsletter also started to cover various AI related topics.  Listed below are a few articles from July 31^st newsletter.

 

AI/Machine Learning/Cognitive Services

 

ML{.NET} Introduction Machine Learning (ML) has come from a buzzword that is nice to have in your application to a must-have feature that works and adds value. Data scientists develop ML models in various ML Frameworks like TensorFlow, Scikit-learn, PyTorch, Azure ML, etc. Before ML.NET became available to all developers, adding the ML functionality to .NET applications required knowledge in some ML frameworks to build and train ML models.

 

AI in real-life: A Q&A with Gavin Day From AllAnalytics In this Q&A with MIT/SMR Connections, Gavin Day, Senior Vice President of Technology at SAS, shares real-life examples of artificial intelligence (AI) at work, discusses picking the right problems...

 

Detecting Financial Fraud with Machine Learning From BlueGranite Blog According to the Federal Trade Commission, consumers reported losing more than $3.3 billion to fraud in 2020, an increase of $1.5 billion since 2019. Contributing to this uptick in...

 

Rise of the Cyborgs: Using AI/ML to Enhance Human Intelligence (Part 1) From Dataversity Click to learn more about author Assaf Egozi. Modern organizations house a growing number of “citizen data analysts.” These individuals hold a wide range of positions in the enterprise, from...

 

An overview of Azure Cognitive Services From SQLShack Microsoft Azure has been a leading cloud service provider over the past few years. In this article, we are going to look into an overview of various cognitive services...

 

Sean Gallagher and an AI expert talk about our crazy machine-learning adventure From Ars Technica Join our headline experiment post-mortem today, July 28, at 1 pm Eastern time!

 

 

Custom Lingual Adaptation (Preview)

“Custom Neural Voices” is a part of Microsoft’s Cognitive Services suite of technologies.  It allows users to develop highly realistic, humanlike voices by using Microsoft's groundbreaking neural text-to-speech technology. A user will simply record audio samples and then upload training data. Once the voice is created, it can be used in applications for Text-to-Speech or Voice Assistant.

 

In addition, once the voice is created, it can be used to speak fluently in 13 other languages:

1. German (Germany)
2. English (Australia)
3. English (Canada)
4. English (Canada)
5. Spanish (Spain)
6. Spanish (Mexico)
7. French (Canada)
8. French (France)
9. Italian (Italy)
10. Japanese (Japan)
11. Korean (Korea)
12. Portuguese (Brazil)
13. Chinese (Mandarin, Simplified)

 

This will provide developers the ability to give their application a voice and persona that can be applied to 13 different languages/dialects.  Global companies such as  BBC, Swisscom,  AT&T and Duolingo have built realistic voices that resonate with their brands.

 

To learn more about custom voices, as well as getting started tutorials, visit https://speech.microsoft.com/customvoice.

 

Aug '21 Technical Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• Aug 3: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• Aug 18: Hudson CodeCraft (https://www.meetup.com/hudson-codecraft/)
• Aug 19 : GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• Aug 26: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 

 

Virtual Conferences

• Jul 29: Dot Net Conf (https://focus.dotnetconf.net/)
• Jul 30: CincyDeliver (http://www.cincydeliver.org/)  
• Aug 18-20: Code PaLOUsa (http://www.codepalousa.com/) 
• Aug 19-20: JavaScript & Friends Conference (https://www.javascriptandfriends.com/)
• Oct 29-31: Azure Community Conference (https://azconf.dev/)
• Nov 8-12: PASS Data Community Summit (https://passdatacommunitysummit.com/)

 

Jul '21 Technical Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• Jun 25: OWASP Cleveland (https://www.meetup.com/owasp-cleveland-group/events/277983962/)
• Jul 6: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• Jul 15: GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• Jul 21: Hudson Software Craftsmanship (https://www.meetup.com/Hudson-Software-Craftsmanship-Meetup/ )
• Jul 22: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 
•  

Virtual Conferences

• Jun 25: Global Azure Data & AI Fest (https://aka.ms/june2021-globalazuredataandaifest)
• Jul 30: CincyDeliver (http://www.cincydeliver.org/)
• Aug 18-20: Code PaLOUsa (http://www.codepalousa.com/)

 

Jun '21 Technical Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• Jun 1: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• Jun 3: Twin Cities .Net UG (https://www.meetup.com/tcdnug/events/278422491/)
• Jun 16: Hudson Software Craftsmanship (https://www.meetup.com/Hudson-Software-Craftsmanship-Meetup/ )
• Jun 17: GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• Jun 24: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 

 

Virtual Conferences

• Jun 17: BlazorDay (https://blazorday.net/)
• Jun 25: Global Azure Data & AI Fest (https://aka.ms/june2021-globalazuredataandaifest)

May Virtual Tech Events

Virtual User Group Meetings

• May 4: ONDT (https://www.meetup.com/ohio-north-database-training/)   
• May 19: Hudson Software Craftsmanship (https://www.meetup.com/Hudson-Software-Craftsmanship-Meetup/ )
• May 20: GLUG.Net: (https://www.meetup.com/GLUGnet/events/)
• May 27: Cleveland C#/VB.Net User Group (https://www.meetup.com/Cleveland-C-VB-Net-User-Group/) 

 

Virtual Conferences

• Apr 24: Global AI Student Conference (https://aiconf.education/)
• May 4: MDC (https://mndevconf.com/)
• May 7: Stir Trek (https://stirtrek.com/)
• May 10: SQL Day Poland (https://sqlday.pl/en/)

 

5 Reasons to Attend the Global AI Night 2021

The Global AI Night is a an online community event organized across the world by local communities that are passionate about artificial intelligence on Microsoft Azure.  For one night, you will get to join various speakers as they share their experience with AI features in Azure.  The event is free of charge, virtual, and open to all. The event is scheduled for Tuesday, April 20^th  4-9 PM EST.  Not sure if you should register?  Here are the top 5 reasons why you should!

 

1. Interact with AI experts actively working in the field

The event will speakers from around the US and the world.  These are professionals actively working in the AI field.  Not only will they share their experience, but you can interact with them directly during the session.  Despite the online presentation, speakers and organizers strive to make it as much of a roundtable discussion as much as possible.  This means you can ask questions at any time, either verbally or via the chat window.  In addition, their contact information will be made available for additional questions.

 

2. Expand your skillset

Working in IT, one always has to keep up with modern technology.  Not keeping up means falling behind in your career.  Attending free events, such as the Global AI Night is a great way to learn, without travel or additional expenses.

 

3. Explore new ways how AI can be used in your organization.  Be a pioneer

Not using AI in your workplace?  This doesn’t mean your organization can’t benefit from AI.  Learning to use AI can help you identify applications that can benefit your end customer by integrating various AI features.  Learn AI and learn to be a pioneer among your peers by bringing added features to your applications.

 

4. Discover free learning resources

With each session, every speaker will present links where you can find more information and helpful tutorials.

 

5. Learn what to do, what not to do, and Gotcha’s

Each speaker will present a session and a walk-thru of creating working demos.  In addition, they will also discuss their own learning experiences, problems encountered.  They will show what to do and what not to do.  Speakers will also cover the hidden gotchas and issues they encountered so you can avoid them.

 

 

For more info on the Global AI Night 2021, please visit https://globalai.community/global-ai-night-april-2021/usa-cleveland.

 

To RSVP, visit https://www.eventbrite.com/e/global-ai-night-2021-cleveland-tickets-148258271481  

 

Looking forward to seeing you online on April 20^th.