An API for hosted deep learning models

An API for hosted deep learning models(blog.algorithmia.com)

111 points by treblig 9 years ago | 34 comments

vonnik 9 years ago |

The history of machine learning startups is littered with companies that thought a hosted web service was a good idea. The problem with this model is that big data, by definition, is costly to move. So if a managed service is not generating and storing the data you need to process with machine learning or deep learning (as you might conceivably with AWS), then you probably don't want to move your data to those algorithms or models. All you'll get are small-data users. The models and algos need to go to the data. That's the most efficient approach, and it means you have to go on prem... Fwiw, that's what we're trying to do with Skymind and Deeplearning4j.

https://skymind.io/ http://deeplearning4j.org/

iraphael 9 years ago | |

My understanding of the post is it would host learned models. You'd train them wherever, but host the learned model in algorithmia, which exposes it through an api, making it easy for others to use your model.

incongruity 9 years ago | | |

It takes big data to train but that trained model can work on "small data" or big data. One-off uses for apps really do lend themselves well to a hosted solution like this IMHO. If you need to classify lots of data – then you are probably at a point to either train your own model or buy it from the developer via this site, I'd think.

scottlocklin 9 years ago | | |

Because if I am capable of training a fancy pants deep learning model to do something helpgul, obviously I need a service to host my model so badly giving someone my model is a better idea than paying $10 a month for an EC2 instance.

platypii 9 years ago | |

There's a clear trend in the industry to increasingly rely on cloud services, so it seems reasonable that machine learning would follow the same trend. As long as the compute is in the same data center, data transfer is rarely the bottleneck for these kinds of deep learning algorithms, which is why we designed algorithmia to be able to operate anywhere -- on all the major cloud providers, as well as on premise.

vonnik 9 years ago | | |

Right, but the question is: Whose cloud and what kind of cloud? Are we talking private cloud, virtual private cloud? Who manages it? Even saying "as long as the compute is in the same data center" is a huge assumption. I think it's great that Algorithmia can go operate anywhere. How do you do that? What do you need to operate well on prem?

rjdagost 9 years ago |

As an algorithm developer and manager I have thought of business ideas similar to what Algorithmia is pursuing. There are a few reasons why I think “algorithms as a service” will not work so well. In most products / services that rely on non-trivial algorithms, the core algorithms are often the “secret sauce” of the business. They are what gives you your edge over your competition. And you need to fully understand and control your secret sauce. You need to know where the core algorithms work well and where they don’t work so well. With an outsourced service, your core algorithms are basically a black box outside your control. Another problem: for most real world algorithms it is pretty rare to be able to take an off the shelf algorithm and have it “just work” well enough for your problem. Often there is a bit of parameter tuning and domain specific knowledge that must be incorporated to get the best results (this is how people like myself get a lot of consulting work). If a generic algorithm does work quite well for your problem, your competitors probably already know about it and you have no real edge over them. A third problem, and this is really the main one: one of the main benefits of developing an advanced algorithm is that once you have it, you “own” it and can deploy it as you see fit. You amortize your costs upfront and are able to use this sunk development cost over and over again without extra cost. But with a service like Algorithmia, you are never able to take full advantage of the tremendous leverage that algorithms can give you. The more you use the algorithms, the more you pay. And if you start paying a lot to use an algorithm you’re going to at some point find it to be better to develop your own implementation and stop paying someone else for the service.

visarga 9 years ago | |

So you can use Algorithmia as only a component of your ML pipeline, or you can use it to try out various out-of-the-box algorithms before taking the effort to run your own. Finding the best setup takes lots of experimentation, anything that can speed that up is useful. We should have easy access to the best performing models in all categories of data: image, video, audio, text, decision making (RL).

Also, these guys could offer support for these models on private cloud servers, to enable privacy.

minimaxir 9 years ago |

> "Using GPUs inside of containers is a challenge. There are driver issues, system dependencies, and configuration challenges. It’s a new space that’s not well-explored, yet. There’s not a lot of people out there trying to run multiple GPU jobs inside a Docker container.”

Er, Nvidia itself has an official Docker application which allows containers to interface with the host GPU, optimized for the deep learning use case: https://github.com/NVIDIA/nvidia-docker

Training models is one thing that can commoditized, like with this API, but building models and selecting features without breaking the rules of statistics is another story and is the true bottleneck for deep learning. That can't be automated as easily.

jc4p 9 years ago |

I'm not a big fan of taking the openness in machine learning and making it a web based product, for me the "whoa" moment from the new approachable machine learning frameworks is that I can train a Tensorflow network on my computer then embedded it in an Android/iOS app that'll work offline.

Also, much more minor grievance but I really dislike websites that don't work on my 15" laptop, what's going on here? http://i.imgur.com/q13lCLK.png

felix_thursday 9 years ago | |

Thanks for pointing out that share button issue. Should be fixed now!

sbierwagen 9 years ago |

How does this compare in price to AWS GPU instances?

anowell 9 years ago | |

The service operates at a higher level than EC2, and pricing is calculated on a per-second of compute basis. Comparing prices is going to depend a lot on the specifics of your workload and your affinity for managing infrastructure.

sbierwagen 9 years ago | | |

So, "more expensive than AWS".

j2kun 9 years ago | |

If you're interested in doing this, check out 21 Inc. You can essentially do the same thing, with tutorials on getting set up on EC2, but get paid directly in bitcoin.

https://21.co/learn/deep-learning-aws/

Disclaimer: I work for 21.

dk8996 9 years ago |

Cool idea. I spent sometime playing around with it. Found that some of the Algos are a bit buggy and not working.

erikb 9 years ago |

Does anybody know if these "free APIs" are actually used to get "free training" for the API owner's models? I mean, is it free as in free beer or as in facebook?

RhodesianHunter 9 years ago | |

I was under the impression that training data needed to contain the answer to the question to be effective, while users of these models would be using them to answer questions.

Unless the users of this service then feed whether the answer given by the service was correct back into the service, I don't see how it would help to train their model.

Happy to be corrected by someone with a better understanding of the space.