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PyTorch is one of the most popular deep learning libraries for Python. In this article, you’ll learn how to use PyTorch, explore the key differences between PyTorch and TensorFlow as well as PyTorch and Keras, and discover some of the best PyTorch projects for beginners — including those that contribute to social good.
Many deep learning frameworks are popular among machine learning and AI enthusiasts, but PyTorch stands out as a clear favorite because of its flexibility and strong computational capabilities. It’s highly effective for building models and has gained widespread adoption in both the research community and modern industries.
Let’s dive into what PyTorch is and what it is used for.
PyTorch is an open-source deep learning tensor library built on the Torch framework for Python. It is primarily used for applications that run on both CPUs and GPUs. Unlike other deep learning frameworks such as Keras and TensorFlow, PyTorch is optimized through its use of dynamic computation graphs. This feature allows developers, researchers, and data scientists to run and test parts of their code in real time. As a result, users don’t need to wait for the entire program to execute to verify whether a specific section of code works properly.

Below are the two main features of PyTorch.
PyTorch is an optimized and easy-to-use platform compared to other Deep Learning platforms as it uses a simplified API. Below are some reasons to choose PyTorch over other DL platforms.

You can use PyTorch to do the following fantastic things.
PyTorch supports debugging tools like Python’s pdb and ipdb, allowing developers to easily identify and fix issues. Programmers can set the environment variable CUDA_LAUNCH_BLOCKING=1 before running a script, which makes PyTorch execute CUDA code synchronously and report errors immediately.
Additionally, PyTorch builds its computational graph at runtime, which makes it more flexible and compatible with other Python tools. This means developers can conveniently use PyCharm or similar IDEs to debug their PyTorch code.
PyTorch makes it easy to move computations between processing units with simple commands. For example, you can use model.cpu() to send data to the CPU and model.cuda() to send data to the GPU.
PyTorch lets you build and modify computational graphs dynamically, allowing you to experiment and track any metrics that matter to your project.
You can also distribute computational tasks across multiple GPUs or CPUs. The data parallelism feature in PyTorch helps wrap modules for efficient parallel processing, speeding up model training and performance.
PyTorch Lightning is an open-source Python wrapper built on top of PyTorch for machine learning researchers. It possesses additional features that allow users to deploy complex models. You can install it using the pip command. Following are some advantages of PyTorch Lightning.

Some key features are given below:
We discussed some important features of PyTorch above. Let’s look into some features of Tensorflow now.
Now, let’s discuss the differences between PyTorch and Tensorflow.

PyTorch, on the other hand, supports fewer features compared to Tensorflow.
First, let’s look into what Keras is before discussing the differences between PyTorch and Keras.
Keras is a framework to interact with high-level APIs in machine learning backends like Tensorflow. It provides rapid experimentation and acts as an interface for the Tensorflow library.
Some essential features of Keras are given below.
Some significant differences between PyTorch and Keras are mentioned below.

Below are the best projects that beginners must try to understand the working of PyTorch.
Transfer learning is a machine learning algorithm that allows us to reuse a pre-trained model on a new task. This project aims to:
The dataset of this project includes the images of driving licenses, social security, and other categories. All the images are of different shapes and sizes and are preprocessed before modeling.
You can go through this link to learn more about the project.
This project aims to build a logistic regression model in PyTorch from scratch. Logistic regression is a probabilistic model that models the probabilities of discrete outcomes given the input variables. The end goal of the project is to:

Following are the steps are taken to carry out this project.
You can go through this link to learn more about the project.
This project aims to optimally tune the hyperparameters like epochs, learning rate, early stopping, and dropout of a neural network to improve the model performance using PyTorch. Hyperparameters are a set of values that control the learning process of a model. You can significantly improve the model performance by tuning the hyperparameters.
The end goal of this project is to:
You can learn more about the project using this link.
Below are the best PyTorch projects for social good.
We can use artificial intelligence to solve problems for social good. For instance, we can address specific pest issues by providing detailed spray recommendations to farmers.

This project uses PyTorch to create a model that accurately predicts pests’ location within cotton crops. The captured image is passed through a multi-task network that verifies whether the image is valid or not. If it is valid, the detection branch identifies the potential location of the detected pests.
You can learn more about the project using this link.
Toyota, the largest car manufacturer in the world, is investing in technologies like autonomous driving cars and predictive driver assistance to prevent cars from crashing.
Toyota collects real-world examples of crashes and simulates the data using PyTorch.
You can learn more about the project using this link.
This project identifies the presence of a specific pathology on the ultrasound image and provides its location with mask and bounding box coordinates. Ultrasound is a portable and inexpensive modality to diagnose life-threatening diseases.

The project creates an offline pathology mobile application that can be used in places without a stable internet connection. The main steps to carry out the project are given below:
You can learn more about: Deploying a Model Using Docker as Endpoint in a Pathology Mobile App
A group of collaborators undertook this project and used PyTorch to interpret their model of war crime prediction. They carried out the following tasks.

Read more full article here: Instant Monitoring System Combating Human Rights Abuses Through NLP
This project uses PyTorch and supports log-based anomaly detection. It aims to analyze the log sequences generated by the system at runtime to discover abnormal system behaviors (binary classification).

You can learn more about the project using this link.
Below are some great resources for beginners and intermediate programmers to learn PyTorch.
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PyTorch continues to be one of the most powerful and beginner friendly deep learning libraries because it combines flexibility, clarity and strong GPU support. The projects listed above show how easily PyTorch can be applied to real learning tasks and also to meaningful social impact work such as medical imaging, safety applications and human rights monitoring. Whether you are practicing core concepts or preparing to build a production level model, PyTorch gives you the freedom to experiment and the tools to create reliable results.
Ready to build impactful AI solutions with PyTorch? Book an exploration call with us and discover how we can support your next project from idea to implementation.