In 2010, MIT Media Lab students Karthik Dinakar and Birago Jones initiated a project to develop a tool that could assist content moderation teams at firms such as Twitter and YouTube. They were invited to showcase their innovation at a White House summit on cyberbullying, however, the demo failed to identify problematic posts because of its inability to recognize teen slang. After resolving this issue by incorporating better understanding of their data, the duo developed the Pienso tool, a point-and-click software for non-expert users to create machine learning models without needing to code.
Pienso is now used to build extensive language models that help in identifying misinformation, weapon sales, human trafficking, and other societal issues. It provides a platform to empower domain experts by offering better understanding and use of their data. Dinakar, one of the co-founders, stated that the models trained by students are far more refined and effective than what they initially anticipated.
Dinakar and Jones converged their learnings as MIT graduate students to develop Pienso, which gained considerable attention, including a subsequent invitation to the White House. The growing popularity of deep learning reinforced their efforts as they continued their work part time until 2016. They also attribute some of their success to the exposure and collaborations they had with various individuals and programs at MIT.
One of the early partners, SkyUK, utilized Pienso to comprehend and resolve common issues faced by their customers. The founders declared that by abbreviating the length of calls, Pienso helped the company save over £7 million. Pienso also partnered with U.S. government officials in 2020 to help manage the Covid-19 outbreaks. The tool aided virology and infectious disease experts in setting up machine-learning models to analyze research articles about coronaviruses, which in turn aided in strengthening the supply chains for significant drugs.
Pienso, which can operate on both internal servers and cloud infrastructure, provides a range of web applications to help users interact with AI effectively without needing any coding skills. Recently, the company announced a partnership with GraphCore, aiming to improve the efficiency and speed of the computing platform for machine learning.
The Pienso founders believe their platform allows individuals who best understand their respective fields to construct AI models that are specifically beneficial for their unique challenges. They envision a future where AI is orchestrated by the people who have a comprehensive grasp of the data.
