What we’re about
Deep Learning is currently a big & growing trend in data analysis and prediction - and the main fuel of a new era of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Google, Facebook and others have shown tremendous success in pushing image, object & speech recognition to the next level.
But Deep Learning can also be used for so many other things! The list of application domains is literally endless.
Although rooted in Neural Network research already in the 1950's, the current trend in Deep Learning is unstoppable, and new approaches and improvements are presented almost every month.
We would like to meet and discuss the latest trends in Deep Learning, Neural Networks and Machine Learning, and reflect the latest developments, both in industry and in research.
The Vienna Deep Learning meetup is positioned at the cross-over of research to industry - having both a focus on novel methods that are published in such a fast pace, and interesting new applications in the startup and industry world. We usually have 2 speakers from either academia, startups or industry, complemented by a "latest news and hot topics" section. Occasionally we do tutorials about software frameworks and how to use Deep Learning in practice. Each evening ends with networking & discussions over drinks and snacks.
Please find all slides of our past meetups, links to photos and some video recordings of our meetups + a wealth of resources to Deep Learning tutorials and more here: https://github.com/vdlm/meetups
Note that this meetup has an intermediate to advanced level (we have done introductions to Deep Learning and neural networks only in the beginning, but try to repeat the most important concepts regularly).
Upcoming events (1)
See all- 67th Vienna Deep Learning Meetup: CLIP Deep Dive & LLMs vs Abusive LanguageFaculty of Computer Science, University of Vienna, Vienna
Dear Deep Learners,
Our last meetup before summer takes place on June 16. Here is the agenda in short:
- A Deep Dive into CLIP embeddings - by Damian Stewart
- LLMs for Abusive Language Detection - by Julia Pardatscher
Please find the details below:
***
Agenda:18:30
- Introduction & Welcome by the meetup organizers
18:45
- Talk 1: A Deep Dive into CLIP embeddings
by Damian Stewart
19:30
- Announcements
- Networking Break & Discussions
20:00
- Talk 2: Revisiting Implicitly Abusive Language Detection: Evaluating LLMs in Zero-Shot and Few-Shot Settings
by Julia Pardatscher
20:40
- Networking & Discussions
22:00 Wrap up & End
***
Talk Details:
Talk 1: A Deep Dive into CLIP embeddings
CLIP embeddings are at the heart of multimodal AI. This talk moves beyond basic applications to delve into how CLIP maps language to images, critically examining the power and unexpected limitations of its mathematical similarity measures through concrete examples. We’ll explore creative ways to manipulate CLIP’s latent space, uncovering untapped potential for generative and search applications. Finally we'll broaden our focus to the challenge of modelling visual meaning more generally. Taking a very gentle step into poststructuralist philosophy, we'll consider the logical limits of systems like CLIP, and the pitfalls of web-scale visual pre-training. By the end we'll have a solid understanding of what CLIP is, what it can and cannot do - and why.Talk Outline:
1. Understanding CLIP Embeddings:
An introduction to how CLIP models map images and text into a shared latent space: what embeddings are, how they are trained, and what they enable. Examples: image search, text-to-image generation.2. The Limits of Mathematical Meaning:
How cosine similarity, zero-shot classification, and semantic proximity work, and where these approaches break down. Examples: successful classifications, revealing failures.3. Manipulating Conceptual Space:
Using embeddings as a creative tool: vector arithmetic (adding, subtracting, blending), semantic pathfinding, interpolation.
Examples: semantic exploration, search augmentations, prompt engineering beyond weighting and word selection.4. Meaning Beyond Mathematics:
A deeper reflection on relational meaning through CLIP embeddings, drawing (very gently) on post-structuralist philosophy. - How CLIP mirrors Saussurian linguistics, what the means for the influence of culture and ideology on embedding spaces, and why understanding these forces is crucial for building next-generation ML-powered systems.About the speaker:
Damian Stewart is a software engineer with a distinctive combination of technical depth and humanistic insight. With over 25 years of experience across industry and research, he designs and builds systems that extend capability, foster creativity, and make innovation accessible to a wider world.Talk 2: Revisiting Implicitly Abusive Language Detection: Evaluating LLMs in Zero-Shot and Few-Shot Settings
Implicit hate speech (IHS), unlike its explicit counterpart, lacks overt slurs or unambiguously offensive keywords, such as bimbo or scum, making it challenging to detect and mitigate. While current research predominantly focuses on explicitly abusive language, the subtler and more covert forms of IHS remain insufficiently studied. The rapid advancement and widespread adoption of large language models (LLMs) have opened new possibilities for various NLP tasks, but their application to IHS detection has been limited. We revisit three very recent challenging datasets of IHS and investigate the potential of LLMs to enhance the detection of IHS in English through zeroshot and few-shot prompting approaches. We evaluate the models’ capabilities in classifying sentences directly as either IHS or benign, and in extracting linguistic features associated with IHS. Our results indicate that classifiers trained on features extracted by advanced LLMs outperform the best previously reported results, achieving near-human performance.About the speaker:
Julia Pardatscher holds a degree in Translation Studies and Multilingual Technologies and is currently a prae-doc and scientific project collaborator at the University of Vienna. More specifically, she is part of the Data Mining and Machine Learning team, working under the supervision of Michael Wiegand and Benjamin Roth.We are very much looking forward to seeing you at our next meetup.
** Thanks to Secure Business Austria we can provide drinks and snacks at this meetup **
Your VDLM Organizers
