How APIs Can Save AI Research Labs: Lessons From OpenAI

"It is not a dream, it is a simple feat of scientific engineering, only expensive -- blind, faint-hearted, doubting world!" Discovering a new medicine is a billion-dollar research endeavour. At least, it can draw in the money as the results are kind of self-explanatory; life-saving. But, in case of AI, which is usually riddled by speculations and scepticism, it is an uphill task for the researchers to sell their idea or to churn profits to keep fueling their AI labs. For example, OpenAI, which started as a non-profit research lab, changed its stance when it partnered with Microsoft. A year later, they have announced that they are making all their exotic deep learning innovations available to the public through an API that comes with a price tag.