The Everything Feed - All Packet Pushers Pods D2DO291: From Politics to Machine Learning and AI Engineering
13 snips
Jan 7, 2026 
Marina Wyss, a Senior Applied Scientist at Twitch, transitions from political science to machine learning, bringing a unique perspective to AI Engineering. She explains the distinctions between AI Engineering and ML Engineering, plus when to use pretrained models versus training from scratch. Wyss highlights the importance of a social science background in framing problems and understanding human-centered ML, while sharing essential resources for aspiring engineers, emphasizing hands-on projects over certificates for career advancement.
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Pick Models By Capability Then Iterate
- Narrow candidate models by modality and capability before prompt testing.
- Then iterate prompts or fine-tune to match your desired output and voice.
Use Fine-Tuning For Format And Voice
- Fine-tune when you need consistent output formats or domain voice.
- It takes relatively few examples to teach a model a specific format or domain knowledge.
Old NLP Pain Points At Coursera
- Marina described an earlier Coursera project trying to classify skills taught in courses using traditional neural networks.
- She says today's LLMs would make that work far easier and more accurate with much less effort.
