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by __rito__ 1319 days ago
1. It depends, if you just want to use some model and call APIs, then you do not have to learn any ML theory. You just have to learn using libraries following their GitHub Readme instructions. Get a Colab Pro+ subscription or run Kaggle Notebooks for free. You can also simply use GUIs built on top of Open Source models.

2. Learn to use the Hugging Face library, and use their stuff on your Notebooks.

3. Learn some ML theory so you can understand hyperparameters better, and can tweak them in a better way.

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If you want to get into training models by yourself from scratch, you have to learn in a deeper manner, and cannot overlook learning ML theory in a deeper manner.

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The most obvious ways would be:

1. Looking into stuff that John Whitaker does [0] and his elaborate free course on AI Art [1].

2. Learning ML from scratch starting from Andrew Ng ML, then going to DL, then learning about GANs.

3. Learning from fast.ai through their two-part course on Deep Learning, where Stable Diffusion is now being taught. Then learn PyTorch from another place like Sebastian Raschka's book.

4. Watching old videos from Stanford CS231n when Karpathy was a TA, and taught in the class. Then Deep Dream was standard.

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If you are a responsible, mature person, and you are in it for the long term, and have deep pockets, buy some GPU. 2x 3090 is reasonable, and should be enough.

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Let me know if you have any further questions.

[0]: https://datasciencecastnet.home.blog/

[1]: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PL23FjyM69j910zCdDFVWcjSIK...

3 comments

Thanks a ton! Another great answer which I will use as a roadmap! Back to buying GPU question - why not renting it on some cloud provider? I have mac - not sure how external gpu fits in the picture here.
Libraries and end user facing projects are beginning to support Mac's GPU.

Renting on cloud platforms is $$$. But sure, you can start by trying there. After the crypto crash, GPU prices have dropped a lot, too.

Also, building a rig with GPUs, and SSHing into it from a Macbook is pretty common.

And also, be aware of roadmaps. Eevry person is different, and their roadmaps should as well be. Make a roadmap through trial and error by trying out many sources. I told you what I think are the best.

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Forgot to mention my Kaggle Notebook [0] on Hugging Face API through which you can start generating text today using their pretrained models available for download.

[0]: https://www.kaggle.com/code/truthr/a-gentle-introduction-to-...

Would also recommend paperspace gradient if you're wanting decent access to a GPU at $8/month for a pro-sub. Been great to help with learning before diving head first into buying one.
Where does the OpenAI APIs fit into this?