From the day we founded Spare5, we had a somewhat crazy goal. Okay, we actually had (and have) quite a few ambitious goals. The one that is top of mind for me today is creating a sense of community among a global, diverse group of people who choose to spend their spare time in our app and website. We affectionately refer to our users as "Fives." Everyone has passions, skills, insights, and free time.

Turning data into insight is one of the top business challenges today, and it becomes especially tricky when the data in question is unstructured. Artificial intelligence has a mixed track record there, but a young startup aims to get better results by bringing humans back into the picture. Spare5 on Wednesday released a new platform that applies a combination of human insight and machine learning to help companies make sense of unstructured data, including images, video, social media content, and text messages. The result, it says, are "game-changing insights delivered cost-effectively and at scale." The company's technology is now being used by companies including Expedia and Getty Images to enrich, clean and label unstructured data.

To set up effective artificial intelligence software, a company needs a lot of data. But what happens if you don't have that kind of specific information about your area? A Seattle-based startup, Mighty AI (formerly known as Spare5) will get it for you by paying subject-matter experts to spend a few minutes answering questions or performing tasks. Some examples include finding golf aficionados for IBM, people who can describe a photo for Getty Images, and radiologists or technicians to read tumor scans. The company, which renamed itself to reflect a focus on AI training tasks, is adding three new investors as part of a $14 million funding round: Intel Capital, Google Ventures and Accenture Ventures.

To set up effective artificial intelligence software, a company needs a lot of data. But what happens if you don't have that kind of specific information about your area? A Seattle-based startup, Mighty AI (formerly known as Spare5) will get it for you by paying subject-matter experts to spend a few minutes answering questions or performing tasks. Some examples include finding golf aficionados for IBM, people who can describe a photo for Getty Images, and radiologists or technicians to read tumor scans. The company, which renamed itself to reflect a focus on AI training tasks, is adding three new investors as part of a $14 million (roughly Rs. 95.5 crores) funding round: Intel Capital, Google Ventures and Accenture Ventures.

The time when work slows down and people pretend not to be checked out and unmotivated to get stuff done. We have a suggestion: do something fun and productive and work-related in these last couple of pre-holiday days in the office. But what meets all of those criteria, you ask? Reading Spare5 blogs, friend. Below are our most-read posts of 2016. Today, natural language processing practitioners have many options when it comes to acquiring annotated datasets to train their algorithms.

This is another installment of Spare5's "Conversations in Machine Learning" blog series. Each week, our content human, Cassie, shares a summary of a recent conversation we had with a machine learning team and potential customer--what they're building, how they're handling training data today, etc. Read more about the series here. One thing I've come to appreciate about machine learning (ML) is that an accomplishment in one broad application enables several smaller specific use cases--that vary so much from each other. It's amazing how the same technological capability can be utilized so differently, to achieve such different goals. It really speaks to the promise of artificial intelligence; it maybe validates some of the hype.

This is another installment of Spare5's "Conversations in Machine Learning" blog series. Each week, our content human, Cassie, shares a summary of a recent conversation we had with a machine learning team and potential customer--what they're building, how they're handling training data today, etc. Read more about the series here. Lack of good, accurate training data for AI is such a problem and Spare5's Training Data as a Service (TDaaS) solution is such a…solution…that super impressive companies like the one I'm talking about today are not only taking our calls, but also eagerly reaching out to us themselves. I know that's NBD for large, well-established organizations, but for us it can almost seem laughable at times--we're a young company, we're relatively new in the AI space, and we're the type of people who giggle uncontrollably at that waving-bear gif. The market needs help, and though we're easily entertained, we're also quite smart and skilled--and we've developed a solution to help propel today's biggest, boldest AI developments forward.

This is another installment of Spare5's "Conversations in Machine Learning" blog series. Each week, our content human, Cassie, shares a summary of a recent conversation we had with a machine learning team and potential customer--what they're building, how they're handling training data today, etc. Read more about the series here. This week I'm featuring a technology that, when I learned about it I said, man I love when people think of stuff like this! Great idea, you technologically inclined people you. So imagine you're flipping through a magazine and see an ad for these great shoes and you're like, those are perfect shoes. You could head to Google, search for the brand, pull up their website, browse for the shoes there… Or you could just snap a picture of them with your phone and let the machine learning-based app we're highlighting today do all the work for you.

This is another installment of Spare5's "Conversations in Machine Learning" blog series. Each week, our content human, Cassie, shares a summary of a recent conversation we had with a machine learning team and potential customer--what they're building, how they're handling training data today, etc. Read more about the series here. This week I'm highlighting a call we had with the makers of a consumer mobile application that is killing it in terms of downloads, usage, and even business model. You've quite likely heard of the app, but due to my vow to not be creepy or shady, I won't name it. So first, do you remember a time when people were not snapping selfies, photo-documenting their brunch, or capturing touching moments with a freaking iPad that blocks everyone else's view?

This is another installment of Spare5's "Conversations in Machine Learning" blog series. Each week, our content human, Cassie, shares a summary of a recent conversation we had with a machine learning team and potential customer--what they're building, how they're handling training data today, etc. Read more about the series here. Shut up and take my money, is basically how I feel about this week's rad application of machine learning. We've had a few calls recently with the Research Engineer and Head of Research at a company that made us all at Spare5 go, "Oh I love them! Coooool!" when we found out they'd come into our prospective-customers universe.