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Another small correction: every instance of "inference" in your comment should probably be replaced with "training." It's the training phase the involves runnin
by twtw 8y ago
Another small correction: every instance of "inference" in your comment should probably be replaced with "training." It's the training phase the involves running gradient descent of various flavors to optimize the network parameters.
- wenc 8y agoThis is an important point. Inferencing means “to predict” (I’m not sure when this terminology became popular; a few years ago most of us were just using the word predict) Once trained, a model no longer requires derivatives. It’s more or less a function evaluation, which can be done on plain CPUs.
- conistonwater 8y agoIt's from statistical inference, e.g., when the goal is to find the values of a model's parameters that match the sample. So if the model is y = f(x, params), inference gives you params, and prediction gives you y for a value of x that you haven't seen before. Also, shouldn't the verb be inferring?
- wenc 8y agoExcept in AI terminology[1], it seems that inference doesn't mean outputting params. It means outputting y. Yes, I believe the verb is "inferring". [1] https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/08/22/difference-deep-learning-training-inference-ai/ https://blogs.nvidia.com/blog/2016/08/22/difference-deep-lea...
- conistonwater 8y agoYou're probably right then. I find AI nomenclature to be a bit of a mess.
- gbrown 8y agoMore than that, inference usually refers to acts of decision making or evidence evaluation, like testing hypotheses or interpreting confidence/credible intervals.