Hello friends!
I really enjoyed reading this Gradient essay on the ethics of machine learning and open source. Chris Moran, a contributor to Rust-ML, discusses or even argues how ML will lead to a new wave of ‘open sourcing’. So far, there are variations to the open and to the free code versions like restricting the hosting, but ML needs more than this - the data, the application and use of the model, the maintenance, the sustainability etc. Talking about sustainability, I will be speaking on a panel about funding of research software tomorrow at the UCL Code Fest.
What else has been going on this week:
Verbit raised $157 million and is probably valued at $1B, with more than 400 educational institutions. Verbit transcriptions can be loaded up on almost any LMS! This is amidst the news that Microsoft is acquiring Nuance, one of the most established providers of transcriptions services. I discuss alternative solutions to transcriptions and where this researcher task might be heading towards in this blog.
Tutoring services are among the fastest growing edtech, along with language learning companies. Ringle does both, is based in South Korea and just raised $18 million.
Nomad Data could be revolutionary for the data providers. One of the biggest challenges, even for academics, is to find good data sets for their research or teaching. It’s a feat to try and find any data from across different providers and a bunch of websites. Google Dataset Search was going to solve some of that, but it remains a pain. Nomad Data is trying to become the marketplace for data, or a dating site for data and ideas! It’s so simple, you write up your request, and get matched with the data. Will it work though? With less than a few months since they started, the Nomad Data already raised $1.6 million in seed funding to work it out. I will be watching!
To close things out on a high note, US is going to spend a quarter-trillion $$$ on research over the next 5 years, to compete with their latest tech threat. Great news for many of the deep tech researchers in America 😎
Have an absolute blast of a week!