Encore Episode: The OCI AI Portfolio Oracle University Podcast

Oracle has been actively focusing on bringing AI to the enterprise at every layer of its tech stack, be it SaaS apps, AI services, infrastructure, or data.
 
In this episode, hosts Lois Houston and Nikita Abraham, along with senior instructors Hemant Gahankari and Himanshu Raj, discuss OCI AI and Machine Learning services. They also go over some key OCI Data Science concepts and responsible AI principles.
 
Oracle MyLearn: https://mylearn.oracle.com/ou/learning-path/become-an-oci-ai-foundations-associate-2023/127177
 
Oracle University Learning Community: https://education.oracle.com/ou-community
 
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/oracle-university/
 
X (formerly Twitter): https://twitter.com/Oracle_Edu
 
Special thanks to Arijit Ghosh, David Wright, Himanshu Raj, and the OU Studio Team for helping us create this episode.
 
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Episode Transcript:
 
00:00
The world of artificial intelligence is vast and everchanging. And with all the buzz around it lately, we figured it was the perfect time to revisit our AI Made Easy series. Join us over the next few weeks as we chat about all things AI, helping you to discover its endless possibilities. Ready to dive in? Let’s go!
00:33
Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast, the first stop on your cloud journey. During this series of informative podcasts, we’ll bring you foundational training on the most popular Oracle technologies. Let’s get started!
00:46
Lois: Welcome to the Oracle University Podcast! I’m Lois Houston, Director of Innovation Programs with Oracle University, and with me is Nikita Abraham, Principal Technical Editor.
Nikita: Hey everyone! In our last episode, we dove into Generative AI and Language Learning Models. 
Lois: Yeah, that was an interesting one. But today, we’re going to discuss the AI and machine learning services offered by Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, and we’ll look at the OCI AI infrastructure.
Nikita: I’m also going to try and squeeze in a couple of questions on a topic I’m really keen about, which is responsible AI. To take us through all of this, we have two of our colleagues, Hemant Gahankari and Himanshu Raj. Hemant is a Senior Principal OCI Instructor and Himanshu is a Senior Instructor on AI/ML. So, let’s get started!
01:36
Lois: Hi Hemant! We’re so excited to have you here! We know that Oracle has really been focusing on bringing AI to the enterprise at every layer of our stack. 
Hemant: It all begins with data and infrastructure layers. OCI AI services consume data, and AI services, in turn, are consumed by applications. 
This approach involves extensive investment from infrastructure to SaaS applications. Generative AI and massive scale models are the more recent steps. Oracle AI is the portfolio of cloud services for helping organizations use the data they may have for the business-specific uses. 
Business applications consume AI and ML services. The foundation of AI services and ML services is data. AI services contain pre-built models for specific uses. Some of the AI services are pre-trained, and some can be additionally trained by the customer with their own data. 
AI services can be consumed by calling the API for the service, passing in the data to be processed, and the service returns a result. There is no infrastructure to be managed for using AI services. 
02:58
Nikita: How do I access OCI AI services?
Hemant: OCI AI services provide multiple methods for access. The most common method is the OCI Console. The OCI Console provides an easy to use, browser-based interface that enables access to notebook sessions and all the features of all the data science, as well as AI services. 
The REST API provides access to service functionality but requires programming expertise. And API reference is provided in the product documentation. OCI also provides programming language SDKs for Java, Python, TypeScript