Kari Luckett 
Comments
April 3, 2018 
Maybe you’ve got a million reward miles you need to use before they expire, but you don’t know which destination to hit first or how to plan your vacation. Or perhaps you’re traveling on business and have several more cities to stop in before you can make it home. How do you figure out the best way to organize your trip? Algorithmia has your solution.
What Is AI?
To understand what Algorithmia does and how it could drastically affect your life, you must first know a thing or two about artificial intelligence. The world is changing rapidly with the development and use of artificial intelligence, or AI as it is commonly referred to.
Many organizations depend on AI to help them in their day-to-day functions. Planes fly via auto-pilot, which is a system based on AI. Facial recognition, credit card fraud detection, medical diagnosis and financial planning are also all run off of an AI reliant system.
Artificial intelligence is basically when a machine or program can do the same “thinking” of a human. By taking in tons of facts and relevant information, it can then use this data to make predictions, recommendations and forecasts.
Reward Expert recently had the pleasure of talking with Mike Anderson, Algorithmia’s Head of Marketing, to learn more about how they are making this complex science very accessible to everyday users.
How Can I Use AI?
Let’s say you are planning a trip and want to hit multiple destinations. The planning alone can wear a person out. But letting a computer do all the work is what this company is all about.
Anderson explained by saying, “If you want to plan a road trip to hit a number of cities, there is a lot of complicated math to figure out. Instead, you can use the traveling salesman algorithm to plan the best route.”
Many of us have become dedicated to Google Maps and wouldn’t dare use anything else for finding directions. So what does the traveling salesman algorithm have that Google Maps doesn’t?
“Google Maps will tell you directions between a set of locations, but it won’t tell you the best order to travel to reduce the number of miles traveled,” explained Anderson. “On a [long] trip that can add up to days of extra driving.”
Other Algorithms for Everyday Life
But that’s not the only application of AI that Algorithmia has to offer. In fact, the Seattle-based company currently offers a library of over 5,000 different algorithms that are used by more than 60,000 developers around the world. Their goal is simple: to make applications smarter by building a community around building smarter applications.
From sentiment analysis algorithms that can detect positive and negative feelings in texts to speech and photo recognition, Algorithmia’s got a lot to offer. They even have a dating algorithm for all you single people out there.
Accolades and the Future
The company has already been recognized by many of the top tech giants, winning the CRN Big Data 100 Award two years in a row and the CB Insights AI 100 Award, which is given to the 100 most promising companies breaking ground on artificial intelligence algorithms and technology.
“I’m most proud that we are empowering over 70,000 developers around the world to use AI/ML models,” Anderson said. “Just a few years ago it would have been unimaginable, and we anticipate that in a few years everyone will be using them. In fact, anyone who uses a spreadsheet can now use Algorithmia algorithms in the cells.”
To learn more about how Algorithmia can help your everyday problems, visit Algorithmia.com
