Daniel Situnayake

In episode 67 of The Gradient Podcast, Daniel Bashir speaks to Daniel Situnayake. Daniel is head of Machine Learning at Edge Impulse. He is co-author of the O’Reilly books "AI at the Edge" and "TinyML". Previously, he’s worked on the Tensorflow Lite team at Google AI and co-founded Tiny Farms, an insect farming company. Daniel has also lectured in AIDC technologies at Birmingham City University.Have suggestions for future podcast guests (or other feedback)? Let us know here!Subscribe to The Gradient Podcast:  Apple Podcasts  | Spotify | Pocket Casts | RSSFollow The Gradient on TwitterOutline:* (00:00) Intro* (1:40) Daniel S Origin Story: computer networking, RFID/barcoding, earlier jobs, Tiny Farms, Tensorflow Lite, writing on TinyML, and Edge Impulse* (15:30) Edge AI and questions of embodiment/intelligence in AI* (21:00) The role of hardware, other constraints in edge AI* (25:00) Definitions of intelligence* (29:45) What is edge AI?* (37:30) The spectrum of edge devices* (43:45) Innovations in edge AI (architecture, frameworks/toolchains, quantization)* (53:45) Model compression tradeoffs in edge* (1:00:30) Federated learning and challenges* (1:09:00) Intro to Edge Impulse* (1:20:30) Feature engineering for edge systems, fairness considerations* (1:25:50) Edge AI and axes in AI (large/small, ethereal/embodied)* (1:37:00) Daniel and Daniel go off the rails on panpsychism* (1:54:20) Daniel’s advice for aspiring AI practitioners* (1:57:20) OutroLinks:* Daniel’s Twitter and blog* Edge Impulse Get full access to The Gradient at thegradientpub.substack.com/subscribe

Daniel Situnayake, a founding TinyML Engineer and author with a rich background at Google, dives into the exciting world of embedded machine learning. He discusses the evolution of machine learning models in edge devices, like smartwatches, and the importance of efficiency in this domain. Daniel highlights the challenges of real-time data processing and shares insights for aspiring ML engineers on starting their journey in embedded systems. He also unveils practical strategies for deploying models that empower various industries while retaining accuracy.

How is AI being used at the edge, and what possibilities does this create for businesses? In this episode, host Bill Pfeifer sits down with the co-authors of the book AI at the Edge, Jenny Plunkett, Senior Developer Relations Engineer and Daniel Situnayake, Head of ML at Edge Impulse. They discuss how to determine which problems can actually be addressed through AI at the edge, how to think about effective AI, and unexpected use cases in generative AI and synthetic data generation. Plus, they cover how AI can support data distillation efforts and how to build teams that can successfully navigate this landscape. ---------Key Quotes:“We're going to be using generative AI to help us build a synthetic data set to train other AI models to deploy to edge devices.” - Jenny“One of the things that's really cool about synthetic data and using generative AI for that, is it potentially reduces the cost of training a model because instead of having to spend huge amounts of money labeling all this data, if you create the data yourself, you can have it implicitly be labeled.” - Dan --------Show Timestamps:(01:49) How did they get started in tech? (03:14) What brought them to AI?(08:12) What brought them together to write their book?(13:26) Determining which problems can be addressed with AI at the edge(15:51) What possibilities does AI at the edge create for businesses? (20:41) Synthetic data and generative AI (24:15) Using AI for data distillation (31:00) Building a skilled and interdisciplinary team (39:30) AI’s transition from a career path to a tool (43:06) Effective AI (46:46) Edge / wildlife conservation case study (49:37) What are they excited about moving forward? --------Sponsor:Over the Edge is brought to you by Dell Technologies to unlock the potential of your infrastructure with edge solutions. From hardware and software to data and operations, across your entire multi-cloud environment, we’re here to help you simplify your edge so you can generate more value. Learn more by visiting dell.com/edge for more information or click on the link in the show notes.--------Credits:Over the Edge is hosted by Bill Pfeifer, and was created by Matt Trifiro and Ian Faison. Executive producers are Matt Trifiro, Ian Faison, Jon Libbey and Kyle Rusca. The show producer is Erin Stenhouse. The audio engineer is Brian Thomas. Additional production support from Elisabeth Plutko and Eric Platenyk.--------Links:Follow Bill on LinkedInConnect with Jenny Plunkett on LinkedInConnect with Daniel Situnayake on LinkedIn and TwitterDaniel’s substack