[enraged_camel]

I've been meaning to learn ML/DL.

My problem is that I can't think of any use cases for it, either in my personal life or work life.

I understand that the technologies have a lot of potential, and are currently used in many major projects and endeavors. I just keep drawing a blank when trying to answer the question, "what would I do with this?"

If I am someone who is goal-driven (rather than, say, learning something for the sake of learning), how can I motivate myself to pick this up?

[jph00]

You might find it helpful to see what other people are doing with deep learning - see if any of it seems relevant to your interests. For instance, here's some examples of folks from diverse backgrounds using DL in their domains of interest: https://www.fast.ai/2019/02/21/dl-projects/ . Or here's a rather deep rabbit hole - hundreds of replies from people showing their learning projects: https://forums.fast.ai/t/share-your-work-here/27676 .

I find it useful to think of DL as just another way to get computers to do what you want. Rather than focusing on control flow and setting/reading variables, you focus on providing examples to learn from. Both approaches can do many of the same things, but each has areas that they're better at. Eg DL is better for things that are hard to explain just how you do them (e.g. seeing pictures, hearing sounds, reading text) and traditional coding is better for things that need specific logical steps. A combination of the two is often best for solving end-to-end problems in practice.

[kevinbird15]

I agree with looking at projects that other people have done. The other thing I would say is: just do part 1 version 3. That will give you a really good idea of what is currently being done in this area and if it isn't interesting to you at that point, you will at least have enough information to know that for sure. Make sure you don't just watch the videos though. You have to actually implement something after each lesson.

[erikgaas]

Sometimes it is useful to make useless things. It will build experience while being fun and making you more able to come up with "useful" things. Tried this with a friend of mine. Our plan was.

1. Take webcam at desk. 2. Build model that detects whether he himself is sitting at his desk. 3. If it is not him, you've detected an intruder, so spray the intruder with a squirt gun or something.

We only got as far as a model that distinguished between him and other people, even deploying it according to this guide. https://course.fast.ai/deployment_render.html

Also the material is just really interesting. If you want to know how a lot of products work, this is one of the most fun ways to learn.

[rashkov]

You might come up with use-cases after going through a few of the examples. You know that expression, "when the only tool you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail"? Well, I think you can use that to your benefit. Once you learn how to swing the hammer of ML/DL, then you'll start seeing nails everywhere.