One of machine learning\u2019s promises is to help humans do things faster and more efficiently. Ironically, one of the roadblocks that keeps businesses and independent developers from capitalizing on ML\u2019s capabilities is that it can be time-consuming and difficult to build, train, and deploy models. PerceptiLabs<\/a>, a two-person Swedish startup, developed a visual drag-and-drop interface to streamline and simplify the entire process.<\/p>\n It\u2019s designed specifically to offload some of the labor a data scientist or developer would usually have to perform, thereby accelerating the process of development. But it also has pragmatic implications for any business or organization struggling with developing ML tools, because in addition to giving a dev team a speed boost, it allows non-technical people to better understand the process and collaborate.<\/p>\n PerceptiLabs CEO and cofounder Martin Isaksson told VentureBeat that the tool \u201c\u2026Makes it easier to debug [ML models] to understand what\u2019s happening, since we have visualizations for basically everything.\u201d<\/p>\n PerceptiLabs started out as essentially a one-off job that Spotify asked Isaksson and his partner, Robert Lundberg, to perform. They taught the company\u2019s 25 in-house data scientists how to apply ML to all the data they were sitting on, and they helped the team create two models and push them into production. After that, they went to work on building their platform full time.<\/p>\n They created what was essentially a beta version, which elicited initial interest from major companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Google, but it lacked a strong user interface. So Isaksson and Lundberg collected some pre-seed money in part to create the visual user interface and improve the user experience. Over the course of a year, alpha and beta testing has helped to refine both.<\/p>\n Now PerceptiLabs has been through the Nvidia Inception<\/a> program, scored a spot<\/a> as a Google Coral<\/a> partner, and has $2 million in seed money from Luminar Ventures and Brightly Ventures.<\/p>\n In addition to providing developers a speedier means of ML modeling, Isaksson spelled out how PerceptiLabs\u2019 platform solves other problems for businesses that are trying to use the technology.<\/p>\n One of them is the age-old compatibility problem. \u201cThere\u2019s so many different [machine learning] frameworks today; even if you use TensorFlow, there\u2019s different versions,\u201d he said. When all of a company\u2019s engineers build their models and push them into production, they need to all be on the same version or there will be issues. If everyone in a company uses PerceptiLabs\u2019 platform, Isaksson said, they would avoid that problem.<\/p>\n Isaksson gave VentureBeat a demonstration of how the platform works, showing that it\u2019s clean and simple enough for a non-developer to use. But he was quick to emphasize that this is a development tool for professionals, not just something for novices to tinker with. \u201cAnyone can build the model, but to really understand what has been done, [and] utilize all the features that make PerceptiLabs unique \u2014 for that you need to be a data scientist and data engineer, a dev who already knows how to program a model,\u201d he wrote in an earlier email conversation.<\/p>\n But, he said, some of the direct feedback that PerceptiLabs has received from beta testers is that it\u2019s simple enough visually that product managers feel like they can grasp the complex models that the data scientists are creating. That\u2019s a form of transparency, and it can engender a certain peace of mind for managers who otherwise may feel like the development work is a black box.<\/p>\n Overall, Isaksson, noted, PerceptiLabs hopes that this platform lowers the barrier of entry for more people and companies to get involved in machine learning, which would have the dual effect of potentially pulling more people into the field to fill the currently empty empty data science jobs and also giving those people a means of doing their work more efficiently.<\/p>\n There are two versions of PerceptiLabs. The free version is available for anyone to download<\/a>, with a getting started guide<\/a>. It has all the visual elements and can run models locally \u2014 Isaksson performed the live PerceptiLabs demo for VentureBeat on a laptop while running a simultaneous video chat \u2014 but the enterprise version can run on a company\u2019s own hardware or in the cloud.<\/p>\nGetting from there to here<\/h2>\n
Solving problems<\/h2>\n
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