Fast.ai
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| Industry | Artificial intelligence |
|---|---|
| Founded | October 2016 |
| Founders | Jeremy Howard, Rachel Thomas |
Key people | Jeremy Howard, Rachel Thomas, Sylvain Gugger |
| Website | www |
fast.ai is a non-profit research group focused on deep learning and artificial intelligence. They are dedicated to creating learning resources aimed at making deep learning as accessible to as many people as possible, regardless of economic status, education, race, geographic location and sex. They do this through a MOOC "Practical Deep Learning for Coders" which has no other prerequisites except for knowledge of the programming language Python.[1]
Background
fast.ai was founded in 2016 by Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas[2] under the slogan “Making neural nets uncool again”. They explain that “being cool is about being exclusive, and that’s the opposite of what we want. We want to make deep learning as accessible as possible” citing users of the programming language C# or operating systems like Windows as also being deserving to participate in the deep learning landscape. In 2018 students of fast.ai outperformed Google in Stanford’s DAWNBench challenge in programming the fastest and cheapest algorithms.[3]
Software
In the fall of 2018, fast.ai released v1.0 of their free open source library for deep learning called fastai (without a period), sitting atop PyTorch. Google Cloud was the first to announce its support.[4]
#Masks4All
fast.ai hosts multiple resources on its site championing the wearing of masks in the wake of the COVID-19 outbreak.[5] Co-founder Jeremy Howard has been a prominent advocate for masks, organizing an open letter directed to all US governors with editor-in-chief of the Blood Cancer Journal Dr Vincent Rajkumar, signed by leading scientists from all over the world.[6] Information regarding the science behind the efficacy of masks during the pandemic can be found through fast.ai in 22 different languages.
References
- ^ "Practical Deep Learning for Coders". Dec 2016.
- ^ "Launching fast.ai". 7 Oct 2016.
- ^ "An AI speed test shows clever coders can still beat tech giants like Google and Intel". The Verge. 7 May 2018.
- ^ "Fast.ai's software could radically democratize AI". ZDnet. 2 Oct 2018.
- ^ "ai-in-society". Retrieved 7 June 2020.
- ^ "An open letter from scientists across the globe calling for use of fabric masks to prevent COVID-19". 14 May 2020.