Original author(s) | Microsoft |
---|---|
Developer(s) | .NET Foundation |
Initial release | 7 May 2018 [1] |
Stable release | 3.0.0 / 28 November 2023 |
Preview release | 3.0.0-preview.23511.1 / 14 October 2023 |
Repository | github |
Written in | C# and C++ |
Operating system | Linux, macOS, Windows [2] |
Platform | .NET Core, .NET Framework |
Type | Machine learning library |
License | MIT License [3] |
Website | dot |
ML.NET is a free software machine learning library for the C# and F# programming languages. [4] [5] [6] It also supports Python models when used together with NimbusML. The preview release of ML.NET included transforms for feature engineering like n-gram creation, and learners to handle binary classification, multi-class classification, and regression tasks. [7] Additional ML tasks like anomaly detection and recommendation systems have since been added, and other approaches like deep learning will be included in future versions. [8] [9]
ML.NET brings model-based Machine Learning analytic and prediction capabilities to existing .NET developers. The framework is built upon .NET Core and .NET Standard inheriting the ability to run cross-platform on Linux, Windows and macOS. Although the ML.NET framework is new, its origins began in 2002 as a Microsoft Research project named TMSN (text mining search and navigation) for use internally within Microsoft products. It was later renamed to TLC (the learning code) around 2011. ML.NET was derived from the TLC library and has largely surpassed its parent says Dr. James McCaffrey, Microsoft Research. [10]
Developers can train a Machine Learning Model or reuse an existing Model by a 3rd party and run it on any environment offline. This means developers do not need to have a background in Data Science to use the framework. Support for the open-source Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) Deep Learning model format was introduced from build 0.3 in ML.NET. The release included other notable enhancements such as Factorization Machines, LightGBM, Ensembles, LightLDA transform and OVA. [11] The ML.NET integration of TensorFlow is enabled from the 0.5 release. Support for x86 & x64 applications was added to build 0.7 including enhanced recommendation capabilities with Matrix Factorization. [12] A full roadmap of planned features have been made available on the official GitHub repo. [13]
The first stable 1.0 release of the framework was announced at Build (developer conference) 2019. It included the addition of a Model Builder tool and AutoML (Automated Machine Learning) capabilities. [14] Build 1.3.1 introduced a preview of Deep Neural Network training using C# bindings [15] for Tensorflow and a Database loader which enables model training on databases. The 1.4.0 preview added ML.NET scoring on ARM processors and Deep Neural Network training with GPU's for Windows and Linux. [16]
Microsoft's paper on machine learning with ML.NET demonstrated it is capable of training sentiment analysis models using large datasets while achieving high accuracy. Its results showed 95% accuracy on Amazon's 9GB review dataset. [17]
The ML.NET CLI is a Command-line interface which uses ML.NET AutoML to perform model training and pick the best algorithm for the data. The ML.NET Model Builder preview [18] is an extension for Visual Studio that uses ML.NET CLI and ML.NET AutoML to output the best ML.NET Model using a GUI. [14]
AI fairness and explainability has been an area of debate for AI Ethicists in recent years. [19] A major issue for Machine Learning applications is the black box effect where end users and the developers of an application are unsure of how an algorithm came to a decision or whether the dataset contains bias. [20] Build 0.8 included model explainability API's that had been used internally in Microsoft. It added the capability to understand the feature importance of models with the addition of 'Overall Feature Importance' and 'Generalized Additive Models'. [21]
When there are several variables that contribute to the overall score, it is possible to see a breakdown of each variable and which features had the most impact on the final score. The official documentation demonstrates that the scoring metrics can be output for debugging purposes. During training & debugging of a model, developers can preview and inspect live filtered data. This is possible using the Visual Studio DataView tools. [22]
Microsoft Research announced the popular Infer.NET model-based machine learning framework used for research in academic institutions since 2008 has been released open source and is now part of the ML.NET framework. [23] The Infer.NET framework utilises probabilistic programming to describe probabilistic models which has the added advantage of interpretability. The Infer.NET namespace has since been changed to Microsoft.ML.Probabilistic consistent with ML.NET namespaces. [24]
Microsoft acknowledged that the Python programming language is popular with Data Scientists, so it has introduced NimbusML the experimental Python bindings for ML.NET. This enables users to train and use machine learning models in Python. It was made open source similar to Infer.NET. [12]
ML.NET allows users to export trained models to the Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) format. [25] This establishes an opportunity to use models in different environments that don't use ML.NET. It would be possible to run these models in the client side of a browser using ONNX.js, a javascript client-side framework for deep learning models created in the Onnx format. [26]
Along with the rollout of the ML.NET preview, Microsoft rolled out free AI tutorials and courses to help developers understand techniques needed to work with the framework. [27] [28] [29]
James D. McCaffrey is an American research software engineer at Microsoft Research known for his contributions to machine learning, combinatorics, and software test automation.
Visual Studio is an integrated development environment (IDE) developed by Microsoft. It is used to develop computer programs including websites, web apps, web services and mobile apps. Visual Studio uses Microsoft software development platforms including Windows API, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation (WPF), Windows Store and Microsoft Silverlight. It can produce both native code and managed code.
Eclipse Deeplearning4j is a programming library written in Java for the Java virtual machine (JVM). It is a framework with wide support for deep learning algorithms. Deeplearning4j includes implementations of the restricted Boltzmann machine, deep belief net, deep autoencoder, stacked denoising autoencoder and recursive neural tensor network, word2vec, doc2vec, and GloVe. These algorithms all include distributed parallel versions that integrate with Apache Hadoop and Spark.
The .NET platform is a free and open-source, managed computer software framework for Windows, Linux, and macOS operating systems. The project is mainly developed by Microsoft employees by way of the .NET Foundation and is released under an MIT License.
TensorFlow is a free and open-source software library for machine learning and artificial intelligence. It can be used across a range of tasks but has a particular focus on training and inference of deep neural networks.
The following table compares notable software frameworks, libraries and computer programs for deep learning.
Keras is an open-source library that provides a Python interface for artificial neural networks. Keras was first independent software, then integrated into TensorFlow library, and later supporting more. "Keras 3 is a full rewrite of Keras [can be used] as a low-level cross-framework language to develop custom components such as layers, models, or metrics that can be used in native workflows in JAX, TensorFlow, or PyTorch — with one codebase." Keras 3 will be the default Keras version for TensorFlow 2.16 onwards, but Keras 2 can still be used.
Apache MXNet is an open-source deep learning software framework that trains and deploys deep neural networks. It aims to be scalable, allows fast model training, and supports a flexible programming model and multiple programming languages. The MXNet library is portable and can scale to multiple GPUs and machines. It was co-developed by Carlos Guestrin at the University of Washington, along with GraphLab.
Chainer is an open source deep learning framework written purely in Python on top of NumPy and CuPy Python libraries. The development is led by Japanese venture company Preferred Networks in partnership with IBM, Intel, Microsoft, and Nvidia.
PyTorch is a machine learning library based on the Torch library, used for applications such as computer vision and natural language processing, originally developed by Meta AI and now part of the Linux Foundation umbrella. It is recognized as one of the two most popular machine learning libraries alongside TensorFlow, offering free and open-source software released under the modified BSD license. Although the Python interface is more polished and the primary focus of development, PyTorch also has a C++ interface.
The Open Neural Network Exchange (ONNX) [] is an open-source artificial intelligence ecosystem of technology companies and research organizations that establish open standards for representing machine learning algorithms and software tools to promote innovation and collaboration in the AI sector. ONNX is available on GitHub.
Deep Learning Studio is a software tool that aims to simplify the creation of deep learning models used in artificial intelligence. It is compatible with a number of open-source programming frameworks popularly used in artificial neural networks, including MXNet and Google's TensorFlow.
Amazon SageMaker is a cloud based machine-learning platform that allows the creation, training, and deployment by developers of machine-learning (ML) models on the cloud. It can be used to deploy ML models on embedded systems and edge-devices. The platform was launched in November 2017.
OpenVINO is an open-source software toolkit for optimizing and deploying deep learning models. It enables programmers to develop scalable and efficient AI solutions with relatively few lines of code. It supports several popular model formats and categories, such as large language models, computer vision, and generative AI.
Infer.NET is a free and open source .NET software library for machine learning. It supports running Bayesian inference in graphical models and can also be used for probabilistic programming.
NNI is a free and open-source AutoML toolkit developed by Microsoft. It is used to automate feature engineering, model compression, neural architecture search, and hyper-parameter tuning.
CatBoost is an open-source software library developed by Yandex. It provides a gradient boosting framework which among other features attempts to solve for Categorical features using a permutation driven alternative compared to the classical algorithm. It works on Linux, Windows, macOS, and is available in Python, R, and models built using catboost can be used for predictions in C++, Java, C#, Rust, Core ML, ONNX, and PMML. The source code is licensed under Apache License and available on GitHub.
GitHub Copilot is a code completion tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI that assists users of Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Neovim, and JetBrains integrated development environments (IDEs) by autocompleting code. Currently available by subscription to individual developers and to businesses, the generative artificial intelligence software was first announced by GitHub on 29 June 2021, and works best for users coding in Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, and Go. In March 2023 GitHub announced plans for "Copilot X", which will incorporate a chatbot based on GPT-4, as well as support for voice commands, into Copilot.
Over time, it will enable other ML tasks like anomaly detection, recommendation system, and other approaches like deep learning using the benefits of added libraries.
Even though the ML.NET library is new, its origins go back many years. Shortly after the introduction of the Microsoft .NET Framework in 2002, Microsoft Research began a project called TMSN ("text mining search and navigation") to enable software developers to include ML code in Microsoft products and technologies. The project was very successful, and over the years grew in size and usage internally at Microsoft. Somewhere around 2011 the library was renamed to TLC ("the learning code"). TLC is widely used within Microsoft and is currently in version 3.10. The ML.NET library is a descendant of TLC, with Microsoft-specific features removed. I've used both libraries and, in many ways, the ML.NET child has surpassed its parent.