Exploring Generative Models: From Belief Networks to VAEs

Aaron Courville is a Professor at the University of Montreal. His research focuses on the development of deep learning models and methods. Aaron's PhD thesis is titled "A Latent Cause Theory of Classical Conditioning", which he completed at Carnegie Mellon University in 2006. We discuss Aaron's work on the latent cause theory during his PhD, talk about how Aaron moved into machine learning and deep learning research, chart a path to today's deep learning methods, and discuss his recent work on systematic generalization in language. Episode notes: cs.nyu.edu/~welleck/episode16.html Follow the Thesis Review (@thesisreview) and Sean Welleck (@wellecks) on Twitter, and find out more info about the show at https://cs.nyu.edu/~welleck/podcast.html Support The Thesis Review at www.buymeacoffee.com/thesisreview