Artificial Intelligence (AI) pioneer Nvidia has announced it will train 100,000 developers in "deep learning" to bolster health care research and improve treatment in diseases like cancer.
Deep learning is Nvidia’s term for machine learning, the idea of pushing computers to learn the way a human would in order to progress what many are calling the next revolution in technology – machines that "think" like humans. Over the past decade, it’s given us self-driving cars, practical speech recognition, effective web search, and a vastly improved understanding of the human genome.
In the past, cancer research institutes have looked into using Nvidia's latest advances in AI and deep learning to help pathologists with their overwhelming tasks. One project, Led by Andrew Beck, associate professor of pathology and director of bioinformatics at BIDMC, used an Nvidia Tesla K80 GPU supercomputer chip to speed up the process of training their computational models in breast cancer diagnosis. The researchers extracted millions of small sections of images that had been labeled either as cancer or normal. They then used those examples to train their models to find the probability that a patch contains cancer, eventually creating tumor probability heatmaps.
However, despite the huge demand for expertise in the AI field for developers, there is not enough experts to fill the demand, so more projects like the above are difficult to get off the ground.
This is why Nvidia has revealed that it will train 100,000 developers this year through something it's calling the Deep Learning Institute (DLI); to provides developers, data scientists and researchers with practical training on the use of the latest AI tools and technology. The DLI will offer 14 different labs and train more than 2,000 developers on the applied use of AI, a tenfold increase over last year.
As part of the DLI initiative, expert instructors from Nvidia, partner companies and universities will teach the hands-on labs, covering the fundamental tenets of deep learning such as using AI for object detection or image classification, applying this to determine the best approach to cancer treatment.
“It is not just about learning the theory but it is getting in and working with the latest GPU technology, manipulating neural networks to be used in areas like automotive and healthcare,” said Nvidia’s vice president for developer programmes, Greg Estes, who announced the news at the annual GTC conference in San Jose.
Introductory courses will be offered for free and those seeking to take advanced courses will have to pay just US $30.
“We want to make it inexpensive and accessible for anyone who wants to learn about deep learning,” he added.
The news comes after Nvidia released its first quarter earnings published on Tuesday, reporting quarterly revenue of $1.94 billion, up 48% year over year, and earning 79 cents per share, up 126% a year ago.
Beating estimates, Nvidia's stock is up more than 14% in after-hours trading. Wall Street analysts were modeling $1.91 billion in revenue and earnings per share of 67 cents, according to Yahoo Finance.
Right now, chip rival Intel is trying to catch up to Nvidia in the AI game. Last year it spent more than $400 million on AI chip and software startup Nervana.
