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AI might be the “ it thing ” of the moment . But that does n’t signify it ’s getting sluttish to deploy .
According to a 2023 S&P Globalsurvey , about half of companies with at least one AI project in production are still at the pilot or validation - of - concept stage . The understanding for the slow wild leek - ups motley , but the unremarkably cite single are challenges around data management , surety and compute resources .
Of business respond to the S&P poll , around half said they are n’t quick to put through AI — and wo n’t be for five years or more .
fortuitously , there ’s an increasing number of products from startups and Big Tech seller likewise that calculate to harness these AI deployment roadblocks . ( SeeML Hub , Kore.aiandViso , to name a few . ) One of the newer entrants isPienso , a chopine that let users build up and deploy models without feature to write code .
Birago Jones and Karthik Dinakar founded Pienso in 2016 establish on their research at MIT ( they ’re alumni ) . The two met a few year back atMIT ’s Media Lab as graduate scholar .
“ We team up up for a class project to progress a tool that would facilitate social media platforms moderate and flag bullying content , ” Jones , who serves as Pienso ’s CEO , secernate TechCrunch in an interview . “ There was just one trouble : While the example itself worked the way it was supposed to , it was n’t trained on the correct information , so it was n’t able to identify harmful content that used teenaged slang expression . ”
Jones and Dinakar eventually realized that the answer was to have capable - affair experts — in this caseful , teenager — help train the model . They build instrument for this function , and some year later , Jones and Dinakar teamed up to commercialize these tools .
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What ensue was Pienso , which Jones describes as an AI suite built for “ non - expert gift ” — namely research worker , seller and customer support teams who have access to large measure of data for AI training , but lack the necessary resource to structure and analyze it .
“ So much of the AI conversation has been dominated by … large language models , ” Jones said , “ but the realness is that no one model can do everything . To be able-bodied to descale to AI ’s full potential difference , where it can manage business processes and interact with customers , you have to be able-bodied to condition and hunky-dory - air your model . Pienso believes that any domain expert , not just an AI engineer , should be able to do just that . ”
Pienso guides users through the process of annotating or labeling training data for pre - tune open reservoir or custom AI modeling . ( It reckon on the simulation , but AI generally needs labels — like an image of a snort couple with the recording label “ finch ” — to learn to perform a task . ) The platform , which can be deployed in the cloud or on - premises , integrates with endeavour system through APIs . But it can also operate without APIs or third - political party services , keeping information within a secure surround .
Sky , the U.K. broadcaster , is using Pienso to analyze customer divine service calls , Jones sound out , while an unnamed U.S. regime means has tested it to monitor illegal weapon system trailing .
“ Pienso ’s flexible , no - codification interface allows team to train fashion model straightaway using their own company ’s data , ” Jones read . “ This alleviates the privacy concerns of using … models , and also is more accurate , capturing the nuances of each individual company . ”
Companies pay Pienso a annual license ground on the issue of AI models they deploy . The greater the number of models , the high the licensing price .
“ We by design design our pricing to reserve customers to test out poser beforehand to translate how AI can help them without first having to make a sizable investment , ” Jones added . “ We want to give customers the exemption to experiment with build new models before deploy them . ”
It ’s a commercial enterprise model that appeals to investor , apparently . Pienso late raised $ 10 million in a Series A financial backing round led by Latimer Ventures with participation from Gideon Capital , SRI , Uncork and Good Growth Capital .
With Pienso raising a amount of $ 17 million , Jones enunciate the young cash will be put toward scaling up Pienso ’s sales , merchandising and customer winner teams , inscribe applied science endowment and building new features for the platform .
enounce Latimer Ventures ’ Luke Cooper in a statement : “ We constantly get wind about the need to democratize AI , but what cause Pienso stand up out is how they ’re think about the function of a sphere expert in this equation . They ’re empowering those who understand their datum best to get the most insights out of it . It ’s further a future where we ’re building smarter AI manakin for a specific software , by the people who are most familiar with the problems they are try out to solve . ”
