It’s becoming more and more tricky for companies that are building an AI or automation product to use data created or owned by other parties to train their AI...
It’s becoming more and more tricky for companies that are building an AI or automation product to use data created or owned by other parties to train their AI. Lawsuits are on the rise. Just do a quick internet search on "AI lawsuits news" and see what comes up. It seems like there is fresh news about this topic every week. And it’s not only legal access to data that’s a problem. Other issues include fair wages for data collectors and quality of datasets.
We’ll go in depth to discuss how Fuel AI solves each of these problems. But first, let me explain my perspective.
When I first started working in the world of AI, we were very algorithm-centric. As we all know, two basic elements are required to build AI. First, the algorithms. Second, data to train the algorithms. Engineers can write really beautiful lines of code and create algorithms to develop stellar models. But if they lack the data to train those algorithms, the AI will never function as intended. The AI will never be built.
The concept is very similar to the way humans work. When a child is born into the world, they are not immediately brilliant. If the child is never taught anything, the child will be incapable of functioning. Imagine if the child didn’t learn anything. I’m not just talking about going to school and learning how to read and write. I’m talking about learning everything from basic fundamentals like how to speak, to life skills like how to cook. At any rate, the person would not be able to function. AI is the same. If we don’t teach it, it can’t learn and therefore it will be useless. A robust education is just as important for AI as it is for humans.
To that end, we’ve moved our focus away from algorithms, and turned it toward data. We’ve become extremely data-centric. And we’ve gotten really creative with our data lesson plans. Let’s say, for example, we’re creating an autonomous checkout solution. We would need videos of people shopping in stores. Then we would break down those videos frame-by-frame to annotate various aspects of the images. We might label the images to identify humans. Then we might annotate the image to identify different body parts of each human. Then we might label the different products for sale in the image. Then we might annotate what a person was doing in each image. And so on. After each subsequent labeling of the image, we then feed it into the models. This teaches the AI algorithms something new. The AI, in turn, becomes smarter and smarter.
I might be setting myself up for unkind responses when I say this next thing. But that’s alright. I welcome healthy discussions. And I’m also not an engineer and have no idea how to code. So forgive me when I say, math is math. An algorithm is a set of ordered steps that solves mathematical problems. There can be multiple paths to get to the solution. But in the end, it’s just math. Now data, on the other hand, is the key! Having the right data can make a major difference in whether an AI solution works well or doesn’t work at all.
Now let’s talk about the issues with data and how Fuel AI solves these issues. First let’s address the issue of privacy concerns and ownership around the use of data. In the past, companies that were building an AI solution could simply scrape the web hoping to find the data they needed to train their AI. Sometimes that data is pretty easy to find. And then companies building AI simply used the data they “found” to train their AI. But now people are coming back around saying, “Hey, that data is mine. I didn’t give you permission to use it and you didn’t even ask me.” Enter lawsuits. And guess what. Governments are protecting the data owners. In Europe, the GDPR covers data privacy and data ownership, and is the most thorough data policy in the world at the time of this publication. More and more countries and territories are following in the footsteps of the GDPR. Japan, Canada and California also have implemented pretty rigorous privacy policies in the past few years, and we anticipate more are on the way.
So what happens in the instance where the data required to train AI isn’t available on the web? Do we just not develop that particular AI? There are an endless number of great ideas out there about various AI applications and uses. But so many of these potential applications aren’t being built. Or they aren’t being built to their full potential. Because the data to train them is lacking.
Second there is an issue with the quality of datasets. There are plenty of marketplaces where companies can post their data collection requests and freelancers can work on those requests. But those marketplaces aren’t purpose-built. They weren’t built with AI training data collection in mind. Sometimes AI Builders write a comprehensive yet simple instruction set that makes it easy for freelancers to understand the request and collect the required data. Most of the time, they don’t. AI Builders often miss valuable aspects of a well-written data collection instruction set. Or they write it to be so technical that the average person can’t understand it. In either case, the AI Builder ends up disappointed when they receive the data from data collectors.
The final problem I’ll discuss today is fair wages for data collectors. The Washington Post recently wrote an article about digital sweatshops to build AI across the globe. I won’t regurgitate the entire article, but the gist is that people are being taken advantage of. They’re not being paid fair wages or sometimes not being paid at all. It can be equated to factory sweatshops in the clothing industry where workers are employed at very low wages, for long hours, and under poor conditions.
Can’t find the sophisticated datasets you’re looking for that are required to train your AI? Or perhaps you don’t want to risk using first-party data without permission? Have you been trying to use other marketplace platforms to obtain the data you need to train your AI without success? Do you worry about exploiting people and want to be sure that all humans are treated fairly? And are you of the mindset that talent is equally distributed, but opportunity is not?
Fuel AI is revolutionizing AI training with the world’s best global marketplace which connects people who take photos with their smartphones to AI Builders for first party data. We’ve gamified the system and we call the people who take pictures Bounty Hunters and the requests we receive from AI companies are called Bounties. Bounties can be in the form of images, videos, audio files, text files and more. No type of data is too obscure for us. We’ve got Bounty Hunters across the globe and our network of Bounty Hunters is growing rapidly. Our pricing is transparent and is based on the World Bank’s country tiers system. A large majority of the price paid for the data goes to the Bounty Hunters. In fact, Fuel AI keeps a maximum of 5% of the price paid. And before we post a Bounty, the Fuel AI team will review the instruction set to ensure that it’s both comprehensive and simple so that Bounty Hunters can easily understand it and capture the exact, custom data the AI Builder needs.
If you need data to train your AI, contact us now.
