sktime is a widely used scikit-learn compatible library for learning with time series. sktime is easily extensible by anyone, and interoperable with the pydata/numfocus stack.

This talk presents progress, challenges, and newest features off the press, in extending the sktime framework to deep learning and foundation models.

Recent progress in generative AI and deep learning is leading to an ever-exploding number of popular “next generation AI” models for time series tasks like forecasting, classification, segmentation.

Particular challenges of the new AI ecosystem are inconsistent formal interfaces, different deep learning backends, vendor specific APIs and architectures which do not match sklearn-like patterns well – every practitioner who has tried to use at least two such models at the same time (outside sktime) will have their individual painful memories.

We show how sktime brings its unified interface architecture for time series modelling to the brave new AI frontier, using novel design patterns building on ideas from hugging face and scikit-learn, to provide modular, extensible building blocks with a simple specification language.

In the last year there hasn’t been a day that passed without us hearing about a new generative AI innovation that will enhance some aspect of our lives. On a number of tasks large probabilistic systems are now outperforming humans, or at least they do so “on average”. “On average” means most of the time, but in many real life scenarios “average” performance is not enough: we need correctness ALL of the time, for example when you ask the system to dial 911.

In this talk we will explore the synergy between deterministic and probabilistic models to enhance the robustness and controllability of machine learning systems. Tailored for ML engineers, data scientists, and researchers, the presentation delves into the necessity of using both deterministic algorithms and probabilistic model types across various ML systems, from straightforward classification to advanced Generative AI models.

You will learn about the unique advantages each paradigm offers and gain insights into how to most effectively combine them for optimal performance in real-world applications. I will walk you through my past and current experiences in working with simple and complex NLP models, and show you what kind of pitfalls, shortcuts, and tricks are possible to deliver models that are both competent and reliable.

The session will be structured into a brief introduction to both model types, followed by case studies in classification and generative AI, concluding with a Q&A segment.