

Ask HN: Would you use a Machine Learning Service? - ma2rten

Hey Guys,<p>I am a graduate student specializing Machine Learning. Next to that I am also working for a (european) Social Network site. Right now I am busy implementing implemented a system to filter spam for them. We were also discussing if we should make use of a company which implements a general propose spam filter for websites. But we think that by making use of the information that we have on our site and that are specific to us, we could improve the system a lot. I was thinking, that a lot of other sites could benefit from using machine learning, but that the field can be really confusing at first, with all the different algorithms and methods.<p>So my idea was to start a general propose Machine Learning service. The service would not require the user to have any knowledge of Artificial Intelligence whatsoever. You just upload your dataset and you are good to go. You can image how big of a disappointment is was when it turned out that someone at Google already had the same idea. I am have not been able to try their Data Prediction API yet, as it’s for US customers only at the moment. I think though that there is still enough room to do something differently then they do. For example allow different types of data (say images) or provide better customer service.<p>So my question to you guys is: Are there any of you who would be interested in such a service?  And if so what is your application? Judging from the comments here there were quite some people who enrolled in the Google API beta. Did you just do so, because it’s Google (e.g. to compare it to your own implementations)? Are there maybe people here who would like to do something that is not possible in Google API ?
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B-Scan
I think that the biggest problem is that people don't know for what to use
things like that. Here at HN population is smart and they will know what and
how. But if you like to catch broader developer population I think it will be
great to provide separate APIs for things like sentiment analysis, comment
spam analysis, images or any other concrete problem solution. If you have a
platform, why not to simplify all and solve someones pain.

Ofcourse, general API will also have an audience, but on this way you will
separate yourself from players like Google.

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ma2rten
I have been thinking about this as well, but the problem is that but the
problem is that people how are completely clueless probably also need some
consulting, which would make it scale badly.

So I though maybe, as long as Google is the only player, the best way in the
first place is to focus on the 'smart' developers and later set up almost sort
of franchise system, where people create services for specific applications
and my start up provides the infrastructure.

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jparicka
Sounds interesting - definitely something I would try out. We played a bit the
crm114 on beepl, I have a pretty sweet python wrapper for it if you like to
see.. The project sits on <http://alpha.beepl.com> \- we use crm114 to 1)
identify most interesting answer, 2) also to identify "good" questions (those
seeking an answer) on twitter, 3) to combat spam. <http://crm114.sf.net> It's
a good shit! I say go for it!

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turtle4
The fact that google has the same idea doesn't mean that you can't make an
offering in the same area, it just means that you need to compete in ways that
are hard for them. Ie, I think their service and API looks great, but I am
totally turned off by their (lack of) customer support. If there was a similar
offering that offered great support, I might be willing to give that a go.

