Lexalytics®, the leader in cloud and on-prem text analytics solutions, announced today that it is unveiling the Magic Machines™ AI Labs in Amherst, MA, to speed innovation in Artificial Intelligence (AI). In stealth mode for the past year, Magic Machines has been focusing on “force-multiplying” AI technologies. These breakthrough technologies researched by Magic Machines are already accelerating Lexalytics’ product development cycle. Over the coming months, Lexalytics will announce products that enable data scientists to handle more projects and empower business intelligence users to shape AI.
Lexalytics has also partnered with two leading academic institutions dedicated to the advancement of data science and marketing technology: University of Massachusetts Amherst’s Center for Data Science and Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism, Media and Integrated Marketing Communications. Through its affiliation with UMass, Lexalytics will work with faculty and students on the underlying challenges of analyzing, visualizing and drawing insights from massive volumes and varieties of data. At the other end of the problem, Northwestern and Lexalytics will partner to ensure the usability and applicability of Magic Machines AI technologies to a broad set of business users.
Acquiring and retaining strong scientific and analytics talent is still an issue for many companies. Magic Machines AI Labs will focus on “force-multiplying” technologies in five primary areas of research, each carefully chosen to maximize automation of building an application-specific AI. These include: Swarm Intelligence/Emergent Behavior, Adaptive AI, Algorithmic Coordination, Transfer Learning and Meta-Learning.
“Smart machines need to be properly set up, maintained and continuously governed if they are to be of maximum benefit to the enterprise,” according to Gartner’s November 2016 Predicts 2017 Artificial Intelligence report. Magic Machines is working towards intelligent automation of these processes, so data scientists can more efficiently apply their time and business analysts can shape the resultant AI systems.
“Lexalytics has a long history and deep expertise in building and deploying thousands of machine-learning models as part of our market leading text analytics toolkits,” said Paul Barba, Chief Scientist, Lexalytics. “Text analytics is an AI-hard problem, meaning that we have solved some of the most difficult AI-related challenges around. After over a year of working quietly on Magic Machines technologies, we’re happy with our results, and ready to catapult innovation in AI even further.”
Lexalytics has had a long-standing informal relationship with the College of Information and Computer Sciences (CICS) at UMass Amherst. CICS faculty members are internationally known for their scientific achievements in the many specialized disciplines now referred to collectively as data science. In 2015, UMass Amherst created the Center for Data Science to catalyze and drive innovation in data science education and research, making the university a natural Lexalytics Magic Machines partner. “Our goals are to establish UMass as a leading public academic institution delivering excellence in data science education, research and industry collaboration, and to thoroughly prepare our students to meet industry demand for highly qualified data scientists,” said Brant Cheikes, Executive Director, Center for Data Science, UMass Amherst.
