“One of the key factors that influenced our decision to partner with CloudFactory was quality. Everything I knew about crowdsourced labeling was that you have to very carefully gamify your solutions, because the labelers are just understandably trying to maximize their reward, with as little effort as possible. With a trained team, you get something you simply can't with crowdsourcing—accountability. In retrospect, this has had a huge impact for us, because the biggest limiting factor on the performance of the models is actually the quality of the labels, and how precise the definitions are. Discussing endless corner cases on a weekly basis with the team, and how they are to be treated, is hugely important,” said Michael Bewley, Senior Director of AI Systems at Nearmap.
It’s a relationship that has gone from strength to strength in the three and a half years since the two companies began working together. The partnership started at just 200 hours of work per month and has grown 1 to 2 orders of magnitude above that in the time since. Working with CloudFactory means those additional hours have made a positive impact on the communities where the work is completed; a fact that appeals to clients like Nearmap.
“Having sent our team members to visit CloudFactory in Nepal, Kenya, and Durham, NC, I was glad to find that the vision is held in practice, as well as intent,” explains Bewley.
Ongoing training, quality reviews, and an understanding of changing client needs gives the Nearmap team confidence their decision to hand the data labeling function to CloudFactory was a sound business move.
“CloudFactory helps with everything we do because it all relies on labeled data. So, in that sense CloudFactory is the first step in everything we do,” said Rickwood.
