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Smart Reply: How the AI-augmented Chat Helps Scale Google’s Tech Support Operations

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Smart Reply, Google's product based on machine learning, natural language understanding, and conversation modeling to respond to IT queries at scale and in real-time. Read the blog to learn how AI powers Google Techstop to resolves Googlers' queries!

As Googlers transitioned to working from home during the pandemic, more and more turned to chat-based support to help them fix technical problems. Google’s IT support team looked at many options to help us meet the increased demand for tech support quickly and efficiently. 

More staff? Not easy during a pandemic. 

Let service levels drop? Definitely not. 

Outsource? Not possible with our IT requirements. 

Automation? Maybe, just maybe…

How could we use AI to scale up our support operations, making our team more efficient?

The answer: Smart Reply, a technology developed by a Google Research team with expertise in machine learning, natural language understanding, and conversation modeling. This product provided us with an opportunity to improve our agents’ ability to respond to queries from Googlers by using our corpus of chat data.  Smart Reply trains a model that provides suggestions to techs in real time. This reduces the cognitive load when multi-chatting and helps a tech drive sessions towards resolution.

chat sessions

In the solution detailed below, our hope is that IT teams in a similar situation can find best practices and a few shortcuts to implementing the same kind of time saving solutions. Let’s get into it!

Challenges in preparing our data

Our tech support service for Google employees—Techstop—provides a complex service, offering support for a range of products and technology stacks through chat, email, and other channels. 

Techstop has a lot of data. We receive hundreds of thousands of requests for help per year. As Google has evolved we’ve used a single database for all internal support data, storing it as text, rather than as protocol buffers. Not so good for model training. To protect user privacy, we want to ensure no PII (personal identifiable information – e.g. usernames, real names, addresses, or phone numbers) makes it into the model.

To address these challenges we built a FlumeJava pipeline that takes our text and splits each message sent by agent and requester into individual lines, stored as repeated fields in a protocol buffer. As our pipe is executing this task, it also sends text to the Google Cloud DLP API, removing personal information from the session text, replacing it with a redaction that we can later use on our frontend. 

With the data prepared in the correct format, we are able to begin our model training. The model provides next message suggestions for techs based on the overall context of the conversation. To train the model we implemented tokenization, encoding, and dialogue attributes.

Splitting it up

The messages between the agent and customer are tokenized: broken up into discrete chunks for easier use. This splitting of text into tokens must be carefully considered for several reasons:

  • Tokenization determines the size of the vocabulary needed to cover the text.
  • Tokens should attempt to split along logical boundaries, aiming to extract the meaning of the text.
  • Tradeoffs can be made between the size of each token, with smaller tokens increasing processing requirements but enabling easier correlation between different spans of text.

There are many ways to tokenize text (SAFT, splitting on white spaces, etc.), here we chose sentence piece tokenization, with each token referring to a word segment. 

Prediction with encoders

Training the neural network with tokenized values has gone through several iterations. The team used an Encoder-Decoder architecture that took a given vector along with a token and used a softmax function to predict the probability that the token was likely to be the next token in the sentence/conversation. Below, a diagram represents this method using LSTM-based recurrent networks. The power of this type of encoding comes from the ability of the encoder to effectively predict not just the next token, but the next series of tokens.

encoder decoder

This has proven very useful for Smart Reply. In order to find the optimal sequence, an exponential search over each tree of possible future tokens is required. For this we opted to use beam search over a fixed-size list of best candidates, aiming to avoid increasing the overall memory use and run time for returning a list of suggestions. To do this we arranged tokens in a trie, and used a number of post processing techniques, as well as calculating a heuristic max score for a given candidate, to reduce the time it takes to iterate through the entire token list. While this improves the run time, the model tends to prefer shorter sequences. 

In order to help reduce latency and improve control we decided to move to an Encoder-Encoder architecture. Instead of predicting a single next token and decoding a sequence of following predictions with multiple calls to the model, it instead encodes a candidate sequence with the neural network.

encoder

In practice, the two vectors – the context encoding and the encoding of a single candidate output – are combined with dot product to arrive at a score for the given candidate. The goal of this network is to maximize the score for true candidates – e.g. candidates that did appear in the training set – and minimize false candidates.

Choosing how to sample negatives affects the model training greatly. Below are some strategies that can be employed:

  • Using positive labels from other training examples in the batch.
  • Drawing randomly from a set of common messages. This assumes that the empirical probability of each message is sampled correctly. 
  • Using messages from context.
  • Generating negatives from another model.

As this encoding generates a fixed list of candidates that can be precomputed and stored, each time a prediction is needed, only the context encoding needs to be computed, then multiplied by the matrix of candidate embeddings. This reduces both the time from the beam search method and the inherent bias towards shorter responses.

Dialogue Attributes

Conversations are more than simple text modeling. The overall flow of the conversation between participants provides important information, changing the attributes of each message. The context, such as who said what to whom and when, offers useful bits of input for the model when making a prediction. To that end the model uses the following attributes during its prediction:

  • Local User ID’s – we set a finite number of participants for a given conversation to represent the turn taking between messages, assigning values to those participants. In most cases for support sessions there are 2 participants, requiring ID 0, and 1.
  • Replies vs continuations – initially modeling focused only on replies. However, in practice conversations also include instances where participants are following up on the previously sent message. Given this, the model is trained for both same-user suggestions and “other” user suggestions.
  • Timestamps  – gaps in conversation can indicate a number of different things. From a support perspective, gaps may indicate that the user has disconnected. The model takes this information and focuses on the time elapsed between messages, providing different predictions based on the values. 

Post processing

Suggestions can then be manipulated to get a more desirable final ranking. Such post-processing includes:

  1. Preferring longer suggestions by adding a token factor, generated by multiplying the number of tokens in the current candidate.
  2. Demoting suggestions with a high level of overlap with previously sent messages.
  3. Promoting more diverse suggestions based on embedding distance similarities.

To help us tune and focus on the best responses the team created a priority list. This gives us the opportunity to influence the model’s output, ensuring that responses that are incorrect can be de-prioritized. Abstractly it can be thought of as a filter that can be calibrated to best suit the client’s needs. 

Getting suggestions to agents

With our model ready we now needed to get it in the hands of our techs. We wanted our solution to be as agnostic to our chat platform as possible, allowing us to be agile when facing tooling changes and speeding up our ability to deploy other efficiency features. To this end we wanted an API that we could query either via gRPC or via HTTPs. We designed a Google Cloud API, responsible for logging usage as well as acting as a bridge between our model and a Chrome Extension we would be using as a frontend.

The hidden step, measurement

Once we had our model, infrastructure, and extension in place we were left with the big question for any IT project. What was our impact? One of the great things about working in IT at Google is that it’s never dull. We have constant changes, be it planned or unplanned. However, this does complicate measuring the success of a deployment like this. Did we improve our service or was it just a quiet month?

In order to be satisfied with our results we conducted an A/B experiment, with some of our techs using our extension, and the others not. The groups were chosen at random with a distribution of techs across our global team, including a mix of techs with varying levels of experience ranging from 3 to 26 months. 

Our primary goal was to measure tech support efficiency when using the tool. We looked at two key metrics as proxies for tech efficiency: 

  1. The overall length of the chat. 
  2. The number of messages sent by the tech.

Evaluating our experiment

To evaluate our data we used a two-sample permutation test. We had a null hypothesis that techs using the extension would not have a lower time-to-resolution, or be able to send more messages, than those without the extension. The alternative hypothesis was that techs using the extension would be able to resolve sessions quicker or send more messages in approximately the same time.

We took the mid mean of our data, using pandas to trim outliers greater than 3 standard deviations away. As the distribution of our chat lengths is not normal, with significant right skew caused by a long tail of longer issues, we opted to measure the difference in means, relying on central limit theorem (CLT) to provide us with our significance values. Any result with a p-value between 1.0 and 9.0 would be rejected. 

Across the entire pool we saw a decrease in chat lengths of 36 seconds.

distribution 1

In reference to the number of chat messages we saw techs on average being able to send 5-6 messages more in less time. 

distribution 2

In short, we saw techs were able to send more messages in a shorter period of time. Our results also showed that these improvements increased with support agent tenure, and our more senior techs were able to save an average of ~4 minutes per support interaction.

distribution 3

Overall we were pleased with the results. While things weren’t perfect, it looked like we were onto a good thing.

So what’s next for us?

Like any ML project, the better the data the better the result. We’ll be spending time looking into how to provide canonical suggestions to our support agents by clustering results coming from our allow list. We also want to investigate ways of making improvements to the support articles provided by the model, as anything that helps our techs, particularly the junior ones, with discoverability will be a huge win for us.

How can you do this?

A successful applied AI project always starts with data. Begin by gathering the information you have, segmenting it up, and then starting to process it. The interaction data you feed in will determine the quality of the suggestions you get, so make sure you select for the patterns you want to reinforce.

Our Contact Center AI allows tokenization, encoding and reporting, without you needing to design or train your own model, or create your own measurements. It handles all the training for you, once your data is formatted properly. 

You’ll still need to determine how best to integrate its suggestions to your support system’s front-end. We also recommend doing statistical modeling to find out if the suggestions are making your support experience better. 

As we gave our technicians ready-made replies to chat interactions, we saved time for our support team. We hope you’ll try using these methods to help your support team scale.

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Google Cloud and Climate Engine Collaborate to Support Climate Action in Public Sector

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Google Cloud and Climate Engine partner to build climate resilience with Google Earth Engine's world-class geospatial capacities, combining AI and ML to provide a centralized system to gather, process and analyse earth based data.

While there is uncertainty about how much the climate will change in the future, we know it won’t look like the past. Extreme weather events will increase in frequency and severity; the world will continue to warm, and the cost of climate change will increase.

Government plays a vital role in understanding and responding to these changes quickly. Achieving this improved response time will require data insights to ensure informed decision-making—from local to global scales. The challenge is not only urgent; it’s one of the world’s biggest “big data” problems.

Fortunately, new technologies to help us monitor the Earth are proliferating. Thousands of satellites take millions of images of the planet every day. Sensors generate data about temperature, precipitation, wind, soil conditions, and more—as frequently as every second. We have more information about the planet’s systems than at any other time in history. And the data will only continue to grow. The problem is not the lack of data–it is harnessing this data to drive insights for decision makers to tackle climate change. That’s why Google Cloud has partnered with Climate Engine.

How Climate Engine and Google Cloud enable greater climate resilience

Climate Engine is a scientist-led company that works with Google to accelerate and scale the use of Google Earth Engine’s world-class geospatial capacities (in addition to those of Google Cloud Storage and BigQuery, among other tools) in support of climate action in the public sector. Powered by Google Cloud’s infrastructure, Google Earth Engine (GEE) combines a multi-petabyte catalog of satellite imagery and geospatial datasets with planetary-scale analysis capabilities, enabling scientists, researchers, and developers to detect changes, map trends, and quantify differences on the Earth’s surface. 

With cloud-based technologies, we can leverage massive computing at a scale that generates actionable insights from Earth-based data. These insights help us better manage resources, understand risks, predict changes, and respond to disasters as we meet the challenge of climate change. Geospatial AI combines the power of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) with geospatial analysis. Google Cloud’s Geospatial AI solutions provide departments and agencies with a centralized system to collect, process, and deliver Earth-based data into decision-making contexts.

Climate Engine and Google Cloud provide specialists with the opportunity to go back in time and see how our landscapes have changed due to changes in climate and other human activities over the past few decades. Years of data can now be quantitatively analyzed and visualized in a matter of a few seconds, enabling government agencies to fulfill their mandates by drawing invaluable insights into how landscapes are changing, what physical and natural assets are at risk, and where the opportunities are for reducing emissions and increasing carbon sequestration. 

“This is game changing for natural resource managers and scientists at public institutions at all levels of government,” says Dr. Daniel McEvoy, regional climatologist, at the Desert Research Institute & Western Regional Climate Center, Nevada System of Higher Education.https://www.youtube.com/embed/aPGsi8bd_Zk?enablejsapi=1&

Use cases for geospatial climate information systems

The use cases for this technology are as varied as the climate challenges themselves. These include monitoring, predicting, and analyzing the risks of extreme weather events like floods, wildfire, drought, extreme heat, wind, and other climate hazards. Use cases also include tracking changes in ecosystems, disease vectors, water availability and quality, soil health, growing seasons, air pollution, and more. These use cases are some of the ways that Google Cloud and Climate Engine can help the public sector deliver on government mandates. These provide insights that are helpful for a wide range of departments, and that can be applied in spatial and temporal scales that are meaningful for governments to take action.

“Our planet is changing at a rate that we have never experienced,” says Forrest Melton of the NASA Western Water Applications Office. To respond to these changes, we must understand what is happening across a wide range of environmental variables and at geospatial scales that range from local to global. We now have access to more data about the planet than ever before. The big challenge is converting data into actionable insights and then rapidly integrating these insights into decision-making systems. Climate Engine and Google Cloud help resolve this problem through innovative analytical tools and effective use of cloud computing.” 

Climate change carries an existential risk to our current and future stability and security. Together, we are working to provide transformational technologies that help meet that risk and build a safer, more resilient future for all of us. 

Learn more about Google Cloud’s environmental initiatives here and here.

Case Study

Cohere uses Google Cloud’s new TPU v4 Pods on its quest to create larger and more powerful language models

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Cohere has entered into a multi-year tech partnership with Google Cloud. With this liaison, Cohere will leverage Google Cloud’s advanced AI and ML infrastructure and custom-designed machine learning chips optimized for large-scale ML.

Over the past few years, advances in training large language models (LLMs) have moved natural language processing (NLP) from a bleeding-edge technology that few companies could access, to a powerful component of many common applications. From chatbots to content moderation to categorization, a general rule for NLP is that the larger the model, the greater the accuracy it’s able to achieve in understanding and generating language.

But in the quest to create larger and more powerful language models, scale has become a major challenge. Once a model becomes too large to fit on a single device, it requires distributed training strategies, which in turn require extensive compute resources with vast memory capacity and fast interconnects. You also need specialized algorithms to optimize the hardware and time resources.

Cohere engineers are working on solutions to this scaling challenge that have already yielded results. Cohere provides developers a platform for working with powerful LLMs without the infrastructure or deep ML expertise that such projects typically require. In a new technical paper, Scalable Training of Language Models using JAX pjit and TPUv4, engineers at Cohere demonstrate how their new FAX framework deployed on Google Cloud’s recently announced Cloud TPU v4 Pods addresses the challenges of scaling LLMs to hundreds of billions of parameters. Specifically, the report reveals breakthroughs in training efficiency that Cohere was able to achieve through tensor and data parallelism.

This framework aims to accelerate the research, development, and production of large language models with two significant improvements: scalability and rapid prototyping. Cohere will be able to improve its models by training larger ones more quickly, delivering better models to its customers faster. The framework also supports rapid prototyping of models that address specific objectives — for example, creating a generative model that powers customer-service chatbot — by experimenting and testing new ideas. The ability to switch back and forth among model types and optimize for different objectives will ultimately allow Cohere to offer models optimized for particular use cases.

The FAX framework relies heavily on the partitioned just-in-time compilation (pjit) feature of JAX, which abstracts the relationship between device and workload. This allows Cohere engineers to optimize efficiency, and performance by aligning devices and processes in the ideal configuration for the task at hand. Pjit works by compiling an arbitrary function into a single program (an XLA computation), that runs on multiple devices — even those residing on different hosts.

Cohere’s new solution also takes advantage of Google Cloud’s new TPU v4 Pods to perform tensor parallelism. which is more efficient than the earlier pipeline parallelism implementation. As the name suggests, the pipeline parallel approach uses accelerators in a linear fashion to scale a workload, like a single long assembly line. Accelerators must process each micro-batch of data before passing it along to the next one, and then run the backward pass in reverse order.

Tensor parallelism eliminates the accelerator idle time of pipeline parallelism, also known as the pipeline bubble. Tensor parallelism involves partitioning large tensors (mathematical arrays that define the relationship among multiple objects such as the words in a paragraph) across accelerators to perform computations at the same time on multiple devices. If pipeline parallelism is an ever-lengthening assembly line, tensor parallelism is a series of parallel assembly lines — one making the engine, the other the body, etc. — that simultaneously come together to form a complete car in a fraction of the time.

These computations are then collated, a process made practical thanks to Google Cloud TPU v4 VMs, which more than double the computational power. The superior performance of v4 chips has enabled Cohere to iterate on ideas and validate them 1.7X faster in computation than before.

At Cohere, we build cutting-edge natural language processing (NLP) services, including APIs for language generation, classification, and search. These tools are built on top of a set of language models that Cohere trains from scratch on Cloud TPUs using JAX. We saw a 70% improvement in training time for our largest model when moving from Cloud TPU v3 Pods to Cloud TPU v4 Pods, allowing faster iterations for our researchers and higher quality results for our customers. The exceptionally low carbon footprint of Cloud TPU v4 Pods was another key factor for us.


Aidan Gomez
CEO and co-founder, Cohere

Why Google Cloud for LLM training?

As part of a multiyear technology partnership, Cohere leverages Google Cloud’s advanced AI and ML infrastructure to power its platform. Cohere develops and deploys its products on Cloud TPUs, Google Cloud’s custom-designed machine learning chips that are optimized for large-scale ML. Cohere’s recently announced their new model improvements and scalability by training an LLM using FAX on Google Cloud TPUs, and this model has demonstrated that transitioning from TPU v3 to TPU v4 has so far enabled them to achieve a total speedup of 1.7x. In addition to a significant performance boost, TPUs provide an excellent user experience with the new TPU VM architecture. Importantly, Google Cloud ensures that Cohere’s state-of-the-art ML training is achieved with the highest standards of sustainability, powered by 90% carbon-free energy in the world’s largest publicly available ML hub.

By adopting Cloud TPUs, Cohere is making LLM training faster, more economical, and more agile. This helps them provide larger and more accurate LLMs to developers, and put NLP technology in the hands of developers and businesses of all sizes.

To learn more about these LLM training advances, you can read the full paper, Scalable Training of Language Models using JAX pjit and TPUv4. To learn more about Cohere’s best practices and AI principles, you can check this article co-authored with Open AI and AI 21 Labs.

Case Study

Customer Voices: How Firms from Across Industries Leverage Google Cloud

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From powering everyday operations and accelerating application innovation, to providing tools for specific business needs and executing on big ideas, to advancing the security of technology solutions, companies from across industries have leveraged Google Cloud for business benefits.

Companies from across industries have turned to Google Cloud for transforming their business, modernizing their infrastructure, and gleaning intelligence from data. For instance:

  • Johnson & Johnson achieved a 41% increase in search results from high-quality job applicants, significantly improving the company’s ability to quickly hire top talent.
  • Sony Network Communications now processes 10 billion monthly queries faster, which advances data analysis.
  • University College Dublin saw significant 6-figure savings by eliminating legacy hardware, software, and maintenance.

And there are many such examples. Read the collection of case studies to find out how companies from across industries and geographies leveraged Google Cloud for measurable business benefits and for solving complex problems.

Case Study

Hike: Processing Analytics Queries 20X Faster with Google Cloud Platform

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After a seamless migration to Google Cloud Platform, Hike has reduced its costs by 20% and processed analytics queries 20 times faster.

After a seamless migration to Google Cloud Platform with CloudCover and Google Cloud Professional Services, Hike has reduced its costs by 20% and processed analytics queries 20 times faster than with its previous cloud provider. The business is also using AI and machine learning to enhance the experience provided by a new sticker-based messaging app, Hike Sticker Chat.

India is a market of opportunity for businesses that provide messaging apps to consumers. With more than 1.3 billion people, the country is the second most populous in the world. However, global messaging app providers face a robust market challenge from Hike, a home-grown internet and technology startup. Launched in 2012, Hike provides innovative products such as Hike Messenger and more recently the AI- and machine-learning-enabled Hike Sticker Chat, a service that enables young people in the country to express themselves through digital stickers.

The business says it understands the people of India and communication like no one else, while its mission is to reduce individuals’ dependency on the keyboard. To do this, Hike is building one of the largest repositories of AI and machine-learning-enabled stickers for Hike Sticker Chat. This messaging platform is, according to Hike, the only product of its type that enables conversations through stickers covering more than 40 languages and local dialects.

Google Cloud Results

  • Processes analytics queries 20X faster than previously
  • Doubles compute throughput
  • Uses Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine managed, distributed capabilities to train complex models on TensorFlow that provide delightful local sticker recommendations through Hike Sticker Chat

Founded by Kavin Bharti Mittal, the Delhi-based venture is backed by SoftBank, Tencent, Tiger Global, Foxconn, and Bharti. To date, Hike has raised $261 million in funding. In August 2016, Hike raised its Series D round of funding, led by Tencent and Foxconn, at a valuation of $1.4 billion. The business is one of the fastest Indian startups to achieve Unicorn status, doing so in less than four years.

Hike started operations on a multinational cloud service. However, as user numbers and usage grew, the business began exploring options to improve performance and stability, reduce costs, and cut administration loads. In particular, Hike wanted to reduce latency between cloud data centers.

Focus on product development

“We aimed to move away from a technology stack with single points of failure to a horizontally scaled, highly reliable, distributed systems and managed services environment that enabled us to focus on product development rather than operations,” says Aditya Gupta, Director, Engineering, Hike.

Hike then began exploring the opportunities presented by Google Cloud Platform. The business held a number of executive-level meetings with Google to understand the capabilities, roadmap, and track record of the cloud service. It then decided to proceed with a proof of concept with Google Cloud Premier Partner CloudCover.

The proof of concept revealed that when Cloud Load Balancing was operating, latency between the Google Cloud data center in Taiwan and Delhi, India, was less than the latency between the incumbent cloud provider’s data center and Delhi. Further, compute throughput was up to two times greater on Compute Engine than on the equivalent service, while Hike could complete more then 1 million connections on Compute Engine – up from 500,000 connections on the incumbent service.

Migrate to GCP

The success of the exercise prompted Hike to migrate its messaging app to Google Cloud Platform. “We chose Google Cloud Platform because of its very broad set of services and features,” explains Gupta. “In addition, Google’s innovation mindset and the richness of the partnership would allow us to be onboarded quickly to machine learning services such as Cloud Machine Learning Engine.”

The business called on Google Cloud Professional Services (Technical Account Management) to help ensure a seamless lift-and-shift migration over two months. Google Cloud Professional Services initially undertook a technical infrastructure kickoff to establish a foundation for architecture requirements such as identity and access management and security.

Google Cloud Professional Services team delivers smooth migration

Google Cloud Professional Services worked closely with Hike to map out and deliver the Google Cloud Platform architecture that would deliver the greatest value to the business. The Professional Services team also worked with Hike to resolve product and support queries quickly; provided project background for product and support teams; and organized project meetings and early adopter program access.

In addition, Professional Services team members worked on site at least once a week, coordinated external support during critical migration periods, and coordinated teams in five countries for a single, 17-hour migration marathon. Over 60 days, the business migrated 7,000 processor cores, running virtual machine instances used for messaging infrastructure and analytics, to Google Cloud Platform.

Throughout the exercise, Google Cloud Professional Services worked with CloudCover to educate the customers’ technology teams to achieve proficiency with Google Cloud Platform. The teams soon built up skills and knowledge of best practices and began applying them to the Google Cloud Platform environment.

The Hike Google Cloud Platform architecture comprises virtual machine instances running in Compute Engine; Cloud Storage for unified object storage; networking; a BigQuery analytics data warehouse; Cloud Dataflow to transform and enrich data; Cloud Load Balancing to distribute workloads to maximize efficiency; and Cloud Dataproc to run Hadoop clusters.

Hike is also stepping up its AI & machine learning capabilities. It uses Google Cloud Machine Learning Engine managed, distributed computing capabilities to train complex models on TensorFlow. This powers key use cases such as delightful local sticker recommendations on Hike Sticker Chat. Hike is also investing heavily on AI and machine learning research.

Hike has achieved a range of benefits from its Google Cloud Platform deployment. As well as reduced latency, improved compute throughput, and increased connection handling, Google Cloud Platform managed services have enabled the business to reduce the time and effort required to administer core infrastructure, with the saved resources allocated to improving its messaging product.

“Managed services are beginning to reduce our operational overheads,” says Gupta. “For example, managed instance groups and Cloud Load Balancing are reducing our instance count and costs, thereby reducing involvement from DevOps and developer teams.”

Google Cloud Platform 20% cheaper

Gupta and his team have calculated that running for three years on Google Cloud Platform will cost, including the cost of migration, 20 percent less than on its previous platform. BigQuery is processing queries 20 times faster than a similar service offered by the previous provider, while storing 125TB of data and streaming 1.5TB of data daily. Furthermore, Hike’s analytics pipeline costs 80 percent less than in its previous environment.

“Google Cloud Platform has played an important role in enabling us to continue to innovate and realize our mission of reducing dependency on the keyboard,” says Gupta.

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Learn Google Cloud’s Latest ML Technologies for Free on Coursera!

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Google Cloud's partnership with Coursera, a renowned e-learning platform offers free training on the latest machine learning (ML) technologies. Register to attend the webinars, and discuss key ML challenges with ML practitioners.

We’re partnering with Coursera, one of the largest online learning platforms in the world, on a new ML Academy to help you sharpen your machine learning (ML) skills and learn about the latest ML technologies from Google Cloud at no-cost. The academy has three core components for you to take advantage of in July and August:

Join the ML Academy webinar to get started

Our July 22 webinar will kick off the ML Academy. During the webinar, Audrey Holmes, Senior Data Scientist at Coursera, will discuss the current market for individuals with ML skills. We will discuss key challenges ML practitioners are facing and how Google Cloud’s products and solutions are addressing these challenges. Doug Kelly, Google Cloud’s Head of AI Learning Services Portfolio, will discuss the best ways to gain ML skills and share a demo of how to train and serve a custom TensorFlow model on Vertex AI, Google Cloud’s machine learning model training and development platform. You’ll have an opportunity to ask questions throughout the webinar. 

After the webinar, you’ll receive an email with a one month free* offer from Coursera for the new Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate. Can’t attend the webinar live? You can watch the webinar on-demand after July 22 and the offer can be claimed until August 31, 2021. 

Keep growing your ML skills with Coursera

There are nine courses in the Preparing for Google Cloud Certification: Machine Learning Engineer Professional Certificate. The courses will cover ML fundamentals, introduction to TensorFlow, production ML systems, and more to help you prepare for the Google Cloud Professional Machine Learning Engineer certification exam. The courses will include labs so you can apply the concepts you’re learning and gain real world experience. 

Demonstrate your skills with badges 

To access even more labs and gain skill badges along the way to demonstrate your knowledge, sign up for the skills challenge. When you select the ML and AI skills challenge track, you’ll get 30 days free access to labs that will walk you through BigQuery, AI Platform, ML APIs, Explainable AI, and more. 

To earn a skill badge, you’ll need to complete the labs and take a final assessment to test your skills. You’ll have the chance to earn three skill badges through the challenge: Perform Foundational Data, ML, and AI tasks; Integrate with Machine Learning APIs; and Explore Machine Learning Models with Explainable AI. 

Ready to join the ML Academy? Sign up for the July 22 webinar here to get started. 


*This offer is only available for those who have never previously paid for Coursera. A credit card is required to activate your first month free. After the first month is over, your subscription will auto-renew to a $49 monthly charge until you cancel your Coursera subscription.

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