DevoxxUA 2021. Jason Holmberg. Wildbook: Software and Machine Learning Engineers Join the Fight...

Описание: The talk from Devoxx Ukraine 2021 ONLINE
Fb: www.facebook.com/DevoxxUkraine/
Website: www.devoxx.com.ua

As the world faces a Sixth Mass Extinction, biologists and wildlife conservation organizations are increasingly seeking help from a new group of professionals: software and machine learning engineers. In the age of Big Data, images and video from research and tourism are becoming the most abundant and inexpensive sources of wildlife data. If these images could be widely obtained, rapidly analyzed, and combined with related data (e.g., location, date, behavior), then conservation efforts could benefit from larger and broader data sets to analyze, predict, and prevent further wildlife population declines. However, lacking technical training and access to advanced data management tools and predictive AI, researchers are increasingly turning to IT professionals to help them process and understand the unprecedented volume of data now available. Wild Me (wildme.org) is an organization of nine software and machine learning engineers seeking to bring open source data management and AI to biologists across the globe, including research efforts for giraffe in Africa, leafy seadragons in Australia, and snow leopards in Asia. Our Wildbook project demonstrates how individuals or groups of engineers can work side-by-side with biologists to bring much needed and appreciated technical skills into the the fight against extinction, gaining a very real sense of accomplishment while growing their skills from very significant and interesting technical challenges along the way.