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On the “Usefulness” of the Netflix Prize

On the “Usefulness” of the Netflix Prize

7 minute read

It has been over 10 years since the Netflix Prize finished, and I was not expecting to write a blog post about it at this point. However, just in the past couple of weeks I have found myself talkin...

The AI/ML FDA Plan

The AI/ML FDA Plan

9 minute read

In case you are not familiar with it, the Food and Drugs Administration (FDA) is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services. that is responsible for the control and supervision...

On Decoupling

On Decoupling

7 minute read

You have probably heard of the butterfly effect: a distant butterfly flapping its wings can have a hard-to-predict effect on a future event. Everything seems to be connected in the world, and tech ...

Scaling healthcare through AI

Scaling healthcare through AI

10 minute read

Curai’s mission is to “provide the world’s best healthcare to everyone”. In order to do so, we strive to scale the reach of an individual physician by creating tools that automate large portions of...

The 7+1 Habits of Highly Successful Leaders

The 7+1 Habits of Highly Successful Leaders

12 minute read

I recently had a candidate I was interviewing to ask about my leadership style. I gave a short answer, but I was left thinking that I would have liked to continue talking about this for a much long...

The year in AI: 2019 ML/AI advances recap

The year in AI: 2019 ML/AI advances recap

14 minute read

It has become somewhat of a tradition for me to do an end-of-year retrospective of advances in AI/ML (see last year’s round up for example), so here we go again! This year started with a big recogn...

The year in AI/ML advances: 2018 roundup

The year in AI/ML advances: 2018 roundup

8 minute read

It has become a sort of tradition for me to try to summarize ML advances at this time of the year (see here for my Quora answer last year, for example). As always, this summary will necessarily be ...

The Memo Culture

The Memo Culture

12 minute read

Some days back I was having a conversation about the importance of memos and documents in an agile/fast-moving startup company. The person I was talking with was surprised with my thoughts and aske...

Curai

Curai

1 minute read

I haven’t updated this channel in a while. I hope that by now you have already found out elsewhere that about a year ago I co-founded a company in the AI/Healthcare space: Curai. A few weeks back, ...

Evil ads, ad blockers, and the end of Web diversity

Evil ads, ad blockers, and the end of Web diversity

2 minute read

Ad blockers might be good for the individual consumers that are using it, short term. However, longer term, if successful, ad blockers will shape the Internet in a way that will end up hurting cons...

Where am I?

Where am I?

1 minute read

There have recently been some articles (e.g. This list of influencers) that have pointed to this blog and lamented that I don’t update it regularly anymore. It is true. I now realize I should have ...

2015: My Year in Running

2015: My Year in Running

6 minute read

2015 has been a great year for me in many ways, but running has been particularly good. This year I ran 2000 miles (3200 km), compared to the 1850 last year. This is even more remarkable if I think...

Introduction to Recommender Systems: A 4-hour lecture

Introduction to Recommender Systems: A 4-hour lecture

less than 1 minute read

A couple of weeks ago, I gave a 4 hour lecture on Recommender Systems at the 2014 Machine Learning Summer School at CMU. The school was organized by Alex Smola and Zico Kolter and, judging by the a...

Blog posts and Summer gigs

Blog posts and Summer gigs

1 minute read

I have recently heard complaints that this blog is rather quiet lately. I agree. I have definitely been focused on publishing through other sources and have found little time to write interesting t...

Recommendations as Personalized Learning to Rank

Recommendations as Personalized Learning to Rank

6 minute read

As I have explained in other publications such as the Netflix Techblog, ranking is a very important part of a Recommender System. Although the Netflix Prize focused on rating prediction, ranking is...

Tools for Data Processing @ Webscale

Tools for Data Processing @ Webscale

3 minute read

A couple of days ago, I attended the Analytics @Webscale workshop at Facebook. I found this workshop to be very interesting from a technical perspective. This conference was mostly organized by Fac...

Recsys 2012: A long (and likely biased) summary

Recsys 2012: A long (and likely biased) summary

11 minute read

After a great week in beautiful and sunny Dublin (yes, sunny), it is time to look back and recap on the most interesting things that happened in the 2012 Recsys Conference. I have been attending th...

Netflix @ Recsys 2012

Netflix @ Recsys 2012

2 minute read

We are just a few days away from the 2012 ACM Recommender Systems Conference (#Recsys2012), that this year will take place in Dublin, Ireland. Over the years, Recsys has become my favorite conferen...

More data or better models?

More data or better models?

6 minute read

The discussion of whether it is better to focus on building better algorithms or getting more data is by no means new. But, it is really catching on lately. This was one of the preferred discussion...

Recsys 2011 – Notes and Pointers

Recsys 2011 – Notes and Pointers

5 minute read

I found Recsys this year of very high quality in general. There were many good papers and presentations. The Industry track was also very high-quality, with very interesting talks from companies s...

The Recommender Problem & the Presentation Context

The Recommender Problem & the Presentation Context

4 minute read

In the traditional formulation of the “Recommender Problem”, we have pairs of items and users and user feedback values for very few of those dyads. The problem is formulated as the finding of a uti...

Joining Netflix

Joining Netflix

less than 1 minute read

Three weeks ago, I started to work for Netflix. Everything has moved so fast with so many things to do and learn that it seems like I have already been here for a much longer time!

Recommender Systems: We’re doing it (all) wrong

Recommender Systems: We’re doing it (all) wrong

5 minute read

A few days back, there was an interesting post by Judy Robertson in the Communications of the ACM blog. The post, entitled “Stats: We’re doing it wrong“, builds upon a paper from last year’s CHI co...

The Science and the Magic of User Feedback

The Science and the Magic of User Feedback

less than 1 minute read

That was the main title of a series of talks I gave in different labs and companies during my recent California tour. In this presentation, I talked about many of our recent projects related to how...

Managing Research the Agile Way

Managing Research the Agile Way

6 minute read

I have discussed previously on this blog about how well the Scientific Method adapts to Agile approaches. These ideas also took me to an unfinished effort to draft an Agile Research Manifesto. Howe...

Did you prepare your talk?

Did you prepare your talk?

12 minute read

I don’t consider myself to be a great presenter. As a matter of fact, every time I finish a presentation, I find myself thinking about how many things I screwed up and could have done much better. ...

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LLMs

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

2 minute read

In the landscape of Generative AI (GenAI), we often find ourselves amazed at the rapidity and scale of advancements. GPT-4 stands as a shining example, pushing the boundaries of linguistic understa...

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Artificial Intelligence

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

2 minute read

In the landscape of Generative AI (GenAI), we often find ourselves amazed at the rapidity and scale of advancements. GPT-4 stands as a shining example, pushing the boundaries of linguistic understa...

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Machine Learning

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Prompt Engineering

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

The Multimodal Generative AI Revolution is Here!

2 minute read

In the landscape of Generative AI (GenAI), we often find ourselves amazed at the rapidity and scale of advancements. GPT-4 stands as a shining example, pushing the boundaries of linguistic understa...

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machine learning

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running

My most epic runs

My most epic runs

17 minute read

The Big Sur Marathon is considered the most beautiful marathon in the US and top ten in the world. However, it did not make it into my top 10 most epic runs

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personal

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

6 minute read

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” - Amara’s law

A new chapter

A new chapter

9 minute read

(Read my cofounder Neal Khosla’s version in Curai’s blog )

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career

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

6 minute read

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” - Amara’s law

A new chapter

A new chapter

9 minute read

(Read my cofounder Neal Khosla’s version in Curai’s blog )

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curai

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

ChatGPT: hype or revolution

6 minute read

“We tend to overestimate the effect of a technology in the short run and underestimate the effect in the long run.” - Amara’s law

A new chapter

A new chapter

9 minute read

(Read my cofounder Neal Khosla’s version in Curai’s blog )

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Transformers

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recsys

Beyond the 5 Stars Round up

Beyond the 5 Stars Round up

2 minute read

Last week, I published a post on the Netflix tech blog. The post, entitled “Netflix Recommendations: Beyond the 5 stars” describes how recommendations have evolved at Netflix since the Netflix Priz...

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generativeAI

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AI

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NLP

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Books

2022: A Year in Books

2022: A Year in Books

3 minute read

I have always loved reading. For the past 3 years I have also gotten into audiobooks, which has increased my book consumption dramatically. I listen to many audiobooks, and then buy in paper those...

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Recommender Systems

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Netflix

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Society

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recommender systems

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Open Source

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software engineering

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Leadership

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Decision making

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