Feb Meetup | Adversarial Models & Synthetic Media - Data Visualization with AI

This is a placeholder for the monthly event - The details of this meetup will be updated shortly. Please check back in a day or two.

Agenda:
5:00 pm - Doors Open
5:30 pm - Networking
5:50 pm - Welcome & Announcements
6:00 pm - Featured Talk (45 mins)
6:45 pm - Break
7:00 pm - Short Talk (20 mins)
7:20 pm - Break
7:30 pm - Doors Close

Featured Talk:
The Fundamentals of Adversarial Models for Generative A.I
and Synthetic Media

In this talk, we'll look at the history of Generative Adversarial networks and Adversarial Models, the first wildly successful generative models, and the high level mechanics of how they work in order to generate synthetic imagery and facial replicas. I'll also go into some demos of how deep fakes are constructed and where we are in the current landscape of deepfake imagery in regards to its social and ethical implications.

If time permits, I'll talk briefly about advanced techniques and alternative technologies to GANs. By the end of the talk, you should have a good sense for the key challenges and opportunities for Generative Adversarial Networks & Adversarial Models.

Speaker Bio:
Shafik Quoraishee is a Senior Android/ML Engineer at the New York Times, working on building out the popular NYT Android Games App behind features like the NYT Crossword, Wordle and more. Prior to that, he worked at the NBA, Business Insider, and Viacom respectively after getting his career start working on signal processing systems and sensors at the Department of Defense.

Short Talk:
"Demystifying Data Science with Developer Tools & AI Assistance"
Want to jumpstart your Data Science journey but you are not a Python expert? No problem. Join us as we walk through a hands-on exercise that teaches you how to learn just what you need to get the job done, using core developer tools with some AI assistance. We'll start with a dataset, and end with a template and environment that you can reuse with other data, to build your own intuition for data analysis & visualization.
To get maximum value from this session, bring your laptops and have a valid GitHub account you can use to fork a sample repo.
Speaker Bio:
Nitya Narasimhan, PhD is an AI Advocate at Microsoft focused on building code and content to help developer audiences be more productive with AI on Azure. She is also a visual storyteller and polyglot who loves to help people learn complex topics by cultivating a sense of curiosity.

Event Sponsors
We are grateful to our hosts and partners at Microsoft for their support. Thank you to Microsoft Reactor for hosting us and the Microsoft Developer Audience team for sponsoring food and drink for this event. Please check out their site and links for more events and resources to help you learn and build with cloud and AI.

Code Of Conduct:
We want this to be a safe and inclusive space for everyone. Attendees are expected to participate in respectful, friendly and professional manner at our events, both in-person and online. Any harassment or violation of the Code of Conduct will not be tolerated and can result in you being asked to leave the event. Please read the Reactor Code Of Conduct for details.