Start-ups, causality in AI and experiences of COVID
Hey everyone,
I hope you’ve all had a great week.
In this week’s email, I’m thinking about start-ups, causality for machine learning, and a musical masterpiece.
🏌️♂️On starting a start-up
This is something I’m thinking about, so I deep-dived into the best blogs and videos I could find. I shared my top takeaways in this Tweetstorm.
If you’re thinking about the start-up route, I’d highly recommend the following:
The Start-Up School by Y Combinator; videos on pretty much any topic you’d want to know
How to start a start-up by Paul Graham
You are not late by Kevin Kelly
I shared on the mailing list a few weeks ago that I’m shifting my focus from ‘gaining insight into machine learning’ to ‘deciding on a problem that I want to focus on solving’.
I currently have a few start-up ideas in mind, including one that I’m planning to launch an MVP for within the next month. These resources were really helpful for guiding the approach I’m planning to take.
↩️ On causality in machine learning
The ‘causation, not correlation’ debate is an age-old one in statistics, but it’s really important in AI and machine learning as well.
This last month I deep-dived into the maths behind investigating causality. Turns out Judea Pearl is basically the godfather of the field and has produced a huge amount of great work.
I’d highly recommend:
His interview on the Artificial Intelligence podcast (an easy listen and good introduction)
His short textbook Causal Inference in Causality: A Primer (for those with a maths background)
His “Book of Why” (for a gentler introduction with more discussion and historical context)
This inspired me to write this blog post about why and how to move from correlation to causation in machine learning, which was published in the Towards Data Science magazine.
✨ Other highlights
One of the highlights of my week was listening to the 30-minute “musical documentary” Isolation, in Your Words on BBC Sounds. It’s aim was to capture the varying human experiences of isolation induced by coronavirus, and it really blew my away. One of the creators was Mandeep Singh, a super-talented musician and doctor, who previously shared this blog about how he learnt to master rap.
It was great to be awarded ‘Scientific Paper of the Year’ this week for our paper on the use of AI in healthcare. The key message from our work was the importance of good scientific methdology in medical studies involving AI.
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About Me
Hi! I’m Chris Lovejoy, a Junior Doctor and Data Scientist based in London.
I’m on a mission to improve healthcare through technology (particularly AI / machine learning), but along the way I want to share learnings that are relevant no matter your career choice or background.
In this weekly newsletter, I share my top thoughts and learnings from each week, as well as links to the best things on the internet that I come across.