ISSUE 295 · July 21, 2020

Insight

We Have Already Let The Genie Out of The Bottle

Given how fast AI has been progressing, how can we be sure that it will be a force for good?
The Rockefeller Foundation | Tim O'Reilly

Math of Social Distancing is a Lesson in Geometry

Figuring out how to keep workers and students 6 feet apart is more complicated than you might think. Essentially, it's a sphere-packing problem, which mathematicians have been studying for centuries.
Quanta Magazine

Profile

Everything you need to know about Palantir

Palantir is a secretive data company that sees itself as more of a defense contractor than a Silicon Valley unicorn. Here's an inside look at what it does and how an upcoming IPO could affect its opaque data practices.
Vox | Open Sourced

Tools and Techniques

Tempering Expectations for GPT-3 and OpenAI’s API

GPT-3 has been getting a lot of attention around the web lately and impressive examples abound. In this post, Max Woolf explores what all the fuss is about and it's one of the best high-level explainers so far.
Max Woolf

How to Build Advanced SQL

This guide to advanced SQL will help you build more maintainable, readable and optimized data workflows.
Better Programming

How we choose what to research

Great article about prioritizing projects in a research department with 30+ data scientists and analysts. Given lots of options, how do you choose what to work on and what to skip?
Riskified Technology

Using AI to drive your business's success

Give your company a competitive advantage with Alex Castrounis's book, AI For People and Business. This read is ideal for any current or future executive, manager, or entrepreneur looking to leverage AI technologies to ensure their organization's continuous growth and success!
// sponsored

Resources

Deep Learning with PyTorch

This new text provides a hands-on introduction to building and training neural networks with PyTorch. The print version will be available in August and, in the meantime, the download is available for free.
PyTorch

Data Viz

Critiquing a Data Visualization Critique

A tweet critique that started with these two maps went viral recently and the discussion was awesome. It's had nearly 50K Likes, which is unheard of for Data Visualization Twitter. Here's what happened.
PolicyViz | Jon Schwabish

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