TopQuants – fostering professional exchange between quants in the Netherlands – and ING – empowering people to stay ahead in life and business – are happy to announce an event on

Validation of Machine Learning Models: challenges and opportunities

The event will take place on Thursday April 4th at 15:30 and will be hosted by McKinsey at their offices on Amstel 344 in Amsterdam.

Machine learning (ML) was first coined in the post-war fifties in the previous century, so some time ago, already. It was then defined as a ‘construct’, as a follow-up to Alan Turing’s proposal in his paper “Computing Machinery and Intelligence“, in which the question “Can machines think?” is replaced with the question “Can machines do what we (as thinking entities) can do?”. In Turing’s proposal the various characteristics that could be possessed by a thinking machine and the various implications in constructing one are exposed.

There are different views about what has actually been accomplished with ML, given the original ideas and expectations, but it’s clear that current levels of computing power have clearly unleashed tremendous new opportunities and risks. It seems that ML is still only impacting the field of operations (‘replication’) and not the field of cognition (‘intelligence’). However, expectations and beliefs that the possibilities of ML will eventually be limitless are on the rise, more than ever. This implies the rapidly growing need to think and create ‘mirrored’ solutions, probably using similar ML/AI technologies, to audit, evidence lineage and validate ML models. This will help to improve the maturity, ‘responsibility’ and ‘image’ of ML and ML-based services, which seems much needed, because of the existing material dependence on ML, known and unknown, visible and invisible, in all layers of business and society.

Our speakers will share their personal views, from several industries and domains, to facilitate an inspiring event and stimulate a healthy discussion.

To conclude the event, there will be complimentary drinks and plenty of networking opportunities for all participants.  If you have registered, but cannot attend, do let us know as soon as possible, so that as many people as possible can join the event!

We hope to see you at the event!