How do Machine Learning Pipelines Work?

Machine learning pipelines have become a core ingredient in every successful business that gets the most of its data. Even for small businesses, data management and analysis is becoming a core component in their day to day work. The reason for that is machine learning pipelines help save money, time and optimize the working process. Whether you are new to machine learning or an advanced programmer, this guide will offer you some insight into machine learning pipelines.

What are Machine Learning Pipelines?

Source: https://towardsdatascience.com/machine-learning-pipelines-feature-engineering-numbers-29f53aaec82a

A machine learning pipeline, also called a model training pipeline, requires a large amount of data. The training process of a machine learning pipeline is always cyclic. With each learning cycle, the model makes a more precise prediction, which is the primary goal.

Before we continue any further, we have to introduce you to one learning model's main components and it's workflow, so things get more evident to you.

Data Import

The raw data can be extracted from many variable sources. The data is the primary input from which the model is trained to make predictions that can be positive or negative.

Data Cleaning

The more data you have, the more training cycles you can run on the model, but the problem is that raw data cannot be applied directly to the code of your learning model. The raw data has to be cleaned, and some of the wrong or redundant pieces have to be deleted. In this case, the data will become more manageable and ready to be used.

EDA (Exploratory Data Analysis)

EDA is the step where the data is analyzed and double-checked by visual methods. You may add some of the missing values manually or remove them or do some scaling processes by writing a code.

Model Training

In this step, the training of your model begins. Depending on the input that you have entered, the computer will give a result called output. In many cases, the output is not what we have expected, and we have to run another training cycle to reach the planned outcome.

Deployment

The deployment is the final step of the machine learning model. It means that your pipeline is ready to be integrated into a real-life production environment and is prepared to give efficient and correct predictions.

Types of Machine Learning

The different types of ML have their pros and cons. They separate into three main types depending on what data is used and if it’s labeled or unlabeled.

Supervised Learning

The most common type of machine learning is supervised learning. In this type of learning, the data has to be accurately labeled to have a properly working model. In supervised learning, the ML algorithm is equipped with a small training data set to work on and gives the algorithm the idea of the problem that it has to work on.

Unsupervised Learning

In unsupervised machine learning, the algorithm works with unlabeled information, and you can't properly train the model. It is caused by the random order of the data and how the learning model perceives it. In this case, no data scientists are needed to put the data in exact order. Consequently, the model will coach on its own, depending on its predictions.

Reinforcement Learning

Reinforcement learning is when the model learns with each attempt. This method is called “a try and error.” Here the programmer trains artificial intelligence by "punishing" it if the action is negative and “rewarding” it if positive. The idea here is that the model must learn which is right and which is not based on the decisions or predictions.

Accelerators

Source: https://www.techslang.com/definition/what-is-an-ai-accelerator/

Machine learning accelerators are nothing else than computer hardware, especially the graphics processing unit (GPU) and the central processing unit (CPU). They speed up the machine learning and the processing of the data. Nowadays, there are many accelerators on the market. So you can choose the right one for your machine learning requirements by doing some research online.

Data Lakes and Streams

Source:https://www.stitchdata.com/resources/what-is-data-lake/

When it comes to storing big data, the two most popular options are requesting data lakes and data warehouses. Data Lake is designed to support all types of data, while Data Warehouse uses highly structured data in most cases. While data-lake technology is relatively new, data warehousing has been with us for a longer time. A Data Lake is specifically designed to support all types of large data sets, such as large databases and large data centers, while data warehouses are used in some cases for highly structured data. Now you got an answer from where all the needed data for AI comes from.

The ability to channel a data stream through one or more transformer programs supports robust and flexible manipulation of the data stream. It is possible to build very complex pipelines that transform data streams using many different utilities while working.

How to Build a Machine Learning Pipeline?

Before building your first ML pipeline, make sure you have the right dataset for the intelligent automation that you need. Depending on what model you want to train, you must determine if the data will be labeled or unlabeled and then download it on the cloud. Remember that it is always better to use labeled data because the training process is faster. Then select the type of machine learning pipeline you want to build. After that, install the requirements in the file requirements.txt. The next step is to create a bunch of folders where you have to save all outputs. A significant database with outputs will lead to the correct decisions. The final step is to run some of the python modules that are part of the pipeline, and that’s it.

Alternatives?

We all know that coding and programming are not for everyone and may seem hard for some of you, but there are alternatives that you can use if you cannot build a Machine Learning pipeline yourself. The best decision will be to leave that to the professional data science company that offers GPU-accelerated computing to process more significant data sets.

If you have the budget and resources as well as huge amounts of data to process. you may hire data scientists full time. You can also think of getting a data science company to help if the model you need to build is too complicated. Taking this step will maximize your profit by using the gathered information in the best possible way. Whether you decide to outsource data science, hire an in-house data science team, or use a data science consulting company, make sure that your decision fits your long-term data strategy, your budget, and your resources.

Conclusion

Data science is all that stays behind the machine learning pipeline, which benefits each business differently. The most common example that we can give you is facial recognition apps that many companies use worldwide not only for enhancing security but also for personalizing services and offering a better customer experience. For example, Las Vegas has the most prominent face recognition system in the world that tracks for casino-related criminals and helps casinos recognize their top customers and enhance their experience.

Artificial intelligence is getting implanted into all business sectors, and many data science companies offer their services to save you time and money when they create a model that is ready for deployment.

Suppose you are an entrepreneur or small business searching for a way to grow revenue and drastically increase efficiency by automating processes and using predictive analytics. In that case, you may need the intelligent automation that machine learning offers.