Predictive APIs Are Driving Machine Learning - The New Stack

Machine learning is increasingly enabling companies to gain strategic advantage by turning big data into insightful and actionable information. But how do they access this new world of artificial intelligence? Offering easy access to machine learning, predictive APIs [application programming interfaces] are emerging as a key driving factor for machine learning (ML) and the overall world of artificial intelligence (AI). Predictive APIs offer the flexibility of deciding to host machine learning in the cloud, in-house or both, giving developers the freedom to work in the language and tools they want. "A predictive API exposes machine learning capability so it can either be an API that gives access to a predictive model, and it can also expose access to an ability to learn new models and to create new models from data," said Louis Dorard, who has a PhD in machine learning and is the author of Bootstrapping Machine Learning and is founder of the series of predictive API conferences, including PAPIs.io "There's machine learning APIs where you can send a data set -- for example, one column for the tweet and another column for positive or negative or neutral -- and then they send it back [through] the API and then you can reuse the model for data," Dorard said.