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Algorithms as a Service

mikesingleton.net

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Re: Algorithms as a Service

#11

Post by shafqat »

I like the concept of an algorithm 'supermarket' where you get all of these algos as part of one API with various objects/methods.

But the problem is one of specialization. Surely there are other APIs out there that specialize in particular aspects of what the supermarket is providing. For example, it this AAS business is providing distance algos as well as image algos, there must be Geo Businesses and Image Businesses that can provide higher quality given their specialization.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#12

Post by mojuba »

I once tried to build a web site with content tied to locations down to the smallest towns in all countries, and I found it hard to get everything right. So I think it would be interesting to have maps, all kinds of geographical information along with some related algorithms "for lease": e.g. find the nearest city to a given location, IP-to-location, address format for a given country for building proper entry forms, phone number formats, districts/county/states for a country, etc.

The database of localities and all associated information is not only huge, it's changing literally every day and thus should be constantly kept up to date. Definitely a good candidate for the hosted service scheme.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#13

Post by cousin_it »

mojuba wrote: post #12

I once tried to build a web site with content tied to locations down to the smallest towns in all countries, and I found it hard to get everything right. So I think it would be interesting to have maps, all kinds of geographical information along with some related algorithms "for lease": e.g. find the nearest city to a given location, IP-to-location, address format for a given country for building proper entry forms,…

http://www.maxmind.com/ is a pretty good IP-to-location database. They have a free coarsened version for download, too.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#14

Post by atamyrat »

I can see this model work for AI problems that depend more on data / trained models than actual code or algorithm itself. It also makes sense for patented algorithms (SIFT maybe), paying per instance solved might be cheaper/easier than dealing with licensing issues.

Author is under impression that implementing algorithms is hard. Real problem is analysing and understanding the problem, implementation of the standard algorithms is the easiest part. If your problem is common enough to have its implementation as service, it's very likely there is free library anyway.

Seriously, ask Dijkstra's shortest path at IOI (high school informatics olympiad), I'd bet half of students would get it 100% correct under an hour.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#15

Post by wheels »

As what we do is effectively a limited case of this (recommendations as a service), I'll give my two cents:

  This will cause a total nerdgasm, and nobody will buy it.
There is an inverse correlation for how much abstraction is between our product and our customers' bottom-lines and how quickly they're willing to open their wallets. The proposed notion here is taking a couple steps further away from providing an end-to-end solution to a problem. Geeks love that kind of stuff. It's hard to get people to pay for it.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#16

Post by Estragon »

pierrefar wrote: post #5

A big problem for this would be the transfer of data to and from the API. Imagine an algo to analyze gigabytes or terabytes of data. Also, protection of the data as it is being transfered, stored, and analyzed is an issue. This is both data integrity and also protection for privacy or confidentiality reasons.

A local client collects summary statistics to send to The Algorithm over the net, kind of like how google's mobile voice search works.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#17

Post by ssp »

a-priori wrote: post #10
pierrefar wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was thinking that as I was typing my comment. Another solution, which S3 uses, is to ship hard disks by courrier. I guess the real metric here is cost per GB transfered in a unit time, say $/GB-hr.

At what point does it become ridiculous to move the data, which may be measured in TB or PB, when the algorithm itself would be measured in KB or MB?

Hush. Not in front of the VCs.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#18

Post by ippisl »

There are many interesting algorithms in academia, that never see the light of day. If such a service could motivate more people from academia to share software , this could become very useful.

Re: Algorithms as a Service

#19

Post by _delirium »

We do this in-house in my research group already, as a way of letting anyone use fairly complex-to-setup AI systems without installing them on every machine. Even lets you use heavyweight AI from, say, Flash without doing something godawful like porting it to ActionScript, because Flash can just call out to some webservice for the algorithm it needs. Or, build a demo you can distribute to people elsewhere without having to distribute the backend as well, because the GUI phones home to get its algorithmic work done on our servers.

It's worked pretty decently, but we keep it internal because we just don't have the compute resources to offer things like SAT-solving or logic programming or planning as a service to the general public.

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