iMerit is a remarkable company of over 4000 people that specializes in annotating the data needed to train machine learning systems.
I am writing a series of blogs for them on various aspects of machine learning. In my latest blog I explain how ML systems embody both human intelligence and a form of machine ‘intelligence’.
Just as our biology provides the basis for human learning, human-provided ML system designs provide frameworks that enable machine learning. Through human engineering, these designs bring ML systems to the point where everything they need to ‘know’ about the world can be reflected in their parameters.
Analogous to the role of our parents and teachers, training data annotation drives the learning process toward competent action. Annotation is the crucial link between the ML system and its operational world, and accurate and complete annotation is the only way an ML system can learn to perform well.