Ideas to monetize new artifical intelligence

[marcus]

I've developed a new machine learning algorithm that understands the relationship between its inputs better and outperforms existing algorithms on almost every test I've done, and I'm looking for new ideas as to how to monetize it. Already working on trading commodities with it, which is progressing but still hasn't reached the point where its a money making scheme. Also working on some CAD (computer assisted diagnosis) applications.

Any ideas?

[zyroth]

I don't believe you.

[marcus]

Challenge me. Select a dataset send me the training data and I'll send you my results so you can verify it...

I don't mind being tested.

[johnrob]

Build a public web API to use your technology for a fee. Make it dead simple to incorporate AI into any application.

[henning]

It's tempting to be a tool vendor, but unfortunately there are many established tool people. You don't even know the names, most likely, of all the little neural network toolkit companies that flopped in the early-mid 90s.

It's better to use a new technology to create a complete solution for people.

[marcus]

Thats an awesome idea. Integration is pretty simple, as you can use it almost as a drop in replacement for a backprop neural network.

[ivankirigin]

Investing. Look to Machine Insight in Cambridge, and the work they've done. They're trying to train an AI system to be Warren Buffet in a box. You don't hear much about this trend, because people are making way too much money to talk about it openly.

I'll put it this way: if you can consistently beat the market by a few percentage points, you can be a billionaire.

[pixcavator]

>...people are making way too much money to talk about it openly.

Or maybe people are _wasting_ way too much money to talk about it openly.

[Retric]

Patent and publish it. CAD is not limited by the algorithm so much as a lack new problems. However, if you can generate a little buzz you can become a consultant / start a consultant company.

PS: Many machine learning systems can trade off accuracy for efficiency so you might look into increasing efficiency vs. accuracy for some existing application.

[marcus]

Thought about patenting it, but the entire idea of a patent is the ability to enforce a monopoly. I will never be able to inspect the insides of any commercial AI in the field, so as to allege an infringement on my patent.

[ivankirigin]

Do not do this. Patents are not good protection, and a good enough algorithm is much better kept a secret.

[tx]

This is what's wrong with our patent system. Imagine if all those great minds who came up with theorems you had to learn in 4-6 years of college decided to patent them.

Math should not be patentable. It's a crime.

[aston]

Here's a start: http://www.netflixprize.com

If you've got awesome prediction technology, that's an easy $50k, and maybe an easy $1 million.

[pixcavator]

How about _proving_ that the algorithm works first. Prove it on something simple and verifiable like symbolic addition http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=75439. Here I go again with my own agenda, sorry...

[marcus]

This is a classic example of the saying "When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail" To a guy with a spam filter, everything looks like mail to be filtered. (it was a cool & very interesting experiment non the less )

Symbolic addition is exactly the wrong kind of problem for this algorithm as the symbols don't have any relationships with each other which is exactly the insight this algorithm adds, and which almost every other dataset has.

I've proven that the algorithm works to my complete satisfaction. I've tested it almost every dataset in UCI machine learning repository and it outperforms the best published results on almost all of them. I've tested it on the data from the KDD 2006 cup a contest in the KDD conference whose goal was to identify Pulmonary Embolism based on data generated from CT scans and it out scored the cup winners by a 50% margin.

I know the algorithm works, I am just not sure how to monetize it...

[basho]

My team is currently in 5th in the Netflix Prize competition. The main part of the method I'm using is pretty general (nothing specific to movies). If anyone here thinks they might have a use for this kind of thing / wants to collaborate on something, send me an email.

[yubrew]

I am a tech commercialization consultant for some of the crazy stuff that comes out of the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program. Scientists and engineers make all this cool stuff, but they don't really know what to do with it, and how to package and sell it. That's where I come in.

E-mail me and maybe we can figure out what it would be good for. I'm thinking you should patent the technology, show proof of concept comparison tests, and shop application specific licenses around.

[jkush]

I'd love to have a virtual clone of myself, i.e. something that has learned to think like me. I would treat it as a virtual assistant. I'd like it to prioritize and schedule my work. Tell me when it's time to call it quits or when I need to be doing something else.

Essentially, it'd be the virtual embodiment of my conscience.

Going along those lines, let's say you're a brilliant CEO or hacker. You could license copies of your wisdom to others who need guidance.

[neilc]

http://channel9.msdn.com/Showpost.aspx?postid=40064

Talks about some similar ideas -- applying ML techniques to make information workers more productive. Cool stuff.

[pcowans]

Can you give any specific examples (references to academic papers) you've already tested it on and shown an improvement - no need to give details if you don't feel you can, but it would be interesting to know which tests you've done and against which existing algorithms.

[marcus]

KDD 2006 cup http://www.cs.unm.edu/kdd_cup_2006

My algorithm scored 2.043 19 on tasks 1 & 2 Top 3 places 1: 1.35 1.28 1.27 Top 3 places 2: 13.58 13.56 13.44 Note these scores represent 5 different teams.

[mrtron]

Dating site matching?

There are a zillion ways to monetize it. The real question is can you successfully do so. What about selling an appliance similar to google search, but instead is your predictive technology. Make a public api for people to test it, and then sell the hardware option.

[paul]

Ad targeting.

[marcus]

Very interesting idea, do you have any idea where I can get a dataset for it? I'd rather test it before I start pouring time & money to building an ad network first

[richcollins]

In response to the idea that your search algorithm is better than all others:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_free_lunch_in_search_and_opt...

In response to your question I say that it should be easy to monetize your algorithm if it is truly good at solving some class problems. Just find problems where the solutions are valuable to some group of people and sell the solutions you create.

[marcus]

Never said it was a search algorithm.

That is what I am trying to find in this thread ideas on where the solutions are most valuable and how to pitch them.

[gnark]

How do you use it to trade commodities? What do you trade?

[fauigerzigerk]

You could try to find a good pilot customer who has valuable data and is willing to work with you to adapt the algorithm to their particular problem. What you want as an outcome is a story like this: "Math Whizzes Turbocharge An Online Retailer's Sales" (http://www.informationweek.com/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=2...)

[marcus]

Working with a medical company to improve the results of their CAD software. After it works (hopefully :) ) that can be a great way to drive the next client.

[hhm]

Who are you? Maybe you can't speak a lot about your discovering, but you can at least tell what your name is and how you got to this?

[marcus]

My name is Avi Marcus, I am a 29 year old, semi retired (sold my previous startup ) hacker from Israel. Started programming at 8, started CS in college when I was 13. Flunked out because I was bored at 15. Always been interested in artificial intelligence, but a year and a half ago I read a book on the way the human brain works and suddenly I had a vision of something programmers missed in all of the machine learning algorithms they built, which is a basic part of the human cognitive process, and I suddenly understood how to add it to existing algorithms.

Anything else?

[jbf]

Netflix challenge? No recurring revenue, but, hey, a million dollars. You'll have to disclose the algorithm to accept the prize.

[marcus]

Thats the problem disclosing the algorithm is something I'd rather avoid. I don't mind sharing it with a company for a licensing fee as long as I don't have to public domain it.

[jsb]

I would use it in productivity software.

The users would input their to do list and the AI would suggest the best next task for them to complete. You could have the user input some information about their lifestyle - married? family? when do they work? etc - and the AI would take into consideration these factors when determining the next best task.

[euccastro]

Very knowledge intensive, isn't it? Sounds as hard as passing the Turing test, to me.

[chwolfe]

Sports Betting