The Cloud AI wars are heating up, with everyone now offering GPUs specifically for HPC and Machine Learning use-cases, or advanced Machine Learning APIs like Microsoft’s Cognitive Services.

That said, I really like Google Cloud’s new Machine Learning APIs [0], which go the extra mile and let you train & run your own models, in a NoOps kind of way. This is greatly useful because there is relatively little value, in my research so far, in just using pre-packaged models like Google Cloud Vision or Microsoft Cognitive Face Detection — most cases I’ve run into require building your own model, or transfer-learning to your own use-case. Kudos to Google Cloud for offering that in beta early, and I’m hoping Microsoft will follow suit!

[0]: https://cloud.google.com/ml/