Your Machine Learning Model Doesn’t Need a Server Anymore

The concept of serverless ML is a new direction, leveraging loosely decoupled serverless technology for delivering core operational requirements like processing and storage in a view to enable AI-powered programs and solutions. Serverless computation platforms drive the execution and coordination of key workflows, such as feature engineering pipelines, training runs, and batch inference processes. These workflows generate deliverables such as feature sets, training sets, machine learning models, and prediction logs processed through a specific serverless feature and model store system. To wrap it off, serverless model deployment yields real-time model access via networked endpoints, with flawless online prediction capabilities.

Here is How Serverless Machine Learning Pipelines Operate

Machine learning pipelines function through a series of operations for processing and storing data, beginning with raw input data. That raw data is feature-engineered, utilized for training model, and culminates in driving a prediction service. A prediction service employs trained model and inference data, and a monitor system stores prediction logs for supporting debugging and observability.

For a serverless ML environment, pipeline phases become stand-alone processes for feature engineering, model training, and inference. Individual pipelines coordinate with each other in terms of loading output and storing input out of a shared feature store or model registry. Prediction logs, such as feature and predicted values, can even be stored back into a feature store. That allows a model to monitor for accuracy, performance, and overall observability.

What Does A Serverless Machine Learning Encompass?

A machine learning workflow is built from a sequence of connected steps that build its core. The artifacts include those of data and model in nature, ranging from data collection and preprocessing to model evaluation and deployment. In other words, all these steps describe the lifecycle of an ML pipeline.

In recent years, with the increased adoption of AI in commercial applications, there has emerged an entire field of MLOps with an aim to automate and streamline most of the processes concerned with the ML pipeline. The general key stages of a typical ML pipeline usually include:

• Data Retrieval: This is the process of locating and extracting specific data from a database based on queries provided by users or applications.
• Data Preparation: The process of gathering, combining, structuring, and organizing data to prepare for any analysis or modeling.
• Model Training: In machine learning, model training means providing an algorithm with features that work continuously to minimize an error in order to develop generalized representations from input data.
• Model Evaluation: The model developed will be, quite appropriately, pitted against specific criteria to check their performance. This effectiveness can be measured as a performance metric, which assigns a numerical value to quantify the success of that model.
• Hyperparameter Tuning: The selection of the best combination of hyperparameters is an important task in any machine learning algorithm. Hyperparameters are settings that guide the learning process and influence how the model is trained.
• Model Deployment: Deploying the machine learning model in a production environment allows it to draw upon data to support real-world business decisions effectively.
• Model Monitoring: Closely monitoring machine learning models in production is important for their reliability and to catch any potential issues that may arise over time.

Integrating AI and ML Automates the Data Pipeline

The diagram below depicts a general pipeline and warehousing system incorporating a machine-learning infrastructure for efficient information management. The pipeline begins with an intake stage, at which raw information is received from databases, external APIS, IoT sensors, and web platforms. Sources pass through a collector, in which information is compiled for processing. Information received is validated through a validator, discarding errors and discrepancies to produce high-quality, clean information for use in successive processing stages. Following intake, the pipeline then progresses toward transformation and information orchestration, in which information is cleaned and processed for warehousing and analysis.

The data orchestrator ensures proper control over data motion in such a way that it will arrive at its target store at an appropriate speed. Automated processing workflows for dealing with information with an orchestrator are particularly important in high-data scenarios, as they eliminate unnecessary work and curtail the role of human errors.

Information processing entails warehousing processed information in a data lake or data warehouse. Information is arranged and organized in a data catalog, and access is eased for real-time and retrospective analysis of stored information.

The stored information forms the basis for training machine learning models in the ML portion. After training, saving, and referencing for inference, trained models enable the system to make estimates and draw intelligence from new streaming information. By continued performance of inference, actionable intelligence, and ever-growing complex data-intensive workloads are processed ever increasingly autonomously, with ever-growing efficiency.

For access and use of information, humans query and inspect information through an information query engine. Business intelligence (BI) software, reporting platforms, and dashboards convert such information into graphical forms for insightfulness. Business intelligence tools, reporting tools, and dashboards present such information in real time for immediate consumption, and stakeholders can make educated, fact-based, and wise decisions. The model identifies an overall mechanism for information simplification, with a demonstration of how machine learning maximizes each portion—from information collection to creating meaningful and actionable insights.

Industry Case Study of Serverless Machine Learning Pipeline in Healthcare

McKesson, a seasoned care administration player, is leveraging its operations with effective utilization of machine learning and significant operational and care delivery improvements. With Snowflake’s AI Data Cloud, McKesson demolished walls between its information silos, and secure and unencumbered collaboration between its disparate care spheres is a reality. Real-time access for clinicians, claims, and social and economic information, key in enhancing care at a lowered expense, is a reality in its operations.

Faster Data Analysis: With 75% shorter information processing times, McKesson completed pipeline run times of between one and three minutes and achieved sustained SLA.

Better Patient Outcomes: With machine learning, providers have seen a 360-degree view of a patient and have delivered personalized care for individualized patient ecosystem requirements.

Lower Operating Costs: With predictive analysis, operations and care management workflows have been optimized, and considerable cost savings have been achieved in overall health system operations.