Pienso has developed a no-code AI builder so the people closest to problems can use the technology rather than relying on machine learning engineers. Credit: Courtesy of Pienso
The day before the White House event, Dinakar spent hours trying to put together a working demo that could identify concerning posts on Twitter. Around 11 p.m., he called Jones to say he was giving up. “These kinds of applications are important to us because our roots are in cyberbullying and understanding how to use AI for things that really help humanity,” says Birago Jones SM ’12, co-founder of Pienso. Credit: Courtesy of PiensoThe insight led the researchers to develop point-and-click tools that allow nonexperts to build machine-learning models.
“The models those kids trained were so much better and nuanced than anything I could’ve ever come up with,” Dinakar says. “Birago and I had this big ‘Aha!’ moment where we realized empowering domain experts — which is different from democratizing AI — was the best path forward.”Jones and Dinakar met as graduate students in the Software Agents research group of the MIT Media Lab. Their work on what became Pienso started in Course 6.
The founders also credit MIT’s Industrial Liaison Program and Startup Accelerator for connecting them to early partners. “Those compounds were surfaced by a team that did not know deep learning but was able to use our platform,” Dinakar says.Because Pienso can run on internal servers and cloud infrastructure, the founders say it offers an alternative for businesses being forced to donate their data by using services offered by other AI companies.