The partnership signifies Sama’s continued commitment to creating innovative technologies to drive the AI industry forward
SAN FRANCISCO, Calif. – (December 2, 2021) -- Sama, a leading machine learning training data and validation provider offering high-quality software and solutions to Fortune 2000 companies, today announces its partnership with Mila, the world’s largest academic research center in machine learning. Selected as a partner for its accurate, bias-free training data solution, Sama will continue its work with Mila to pioneer AI innovation through collaborative research, while developing AI technologies to solve key problems in deep learning, data automation, and synthetic data generation.
In 2020, the artificial intelligence market was valued at an astounding $62.35 billion and is expected to expand at an annual growth rate of 40.2% between 2021 and 2028. In addition to powering major advancements in high-technology, much of this new AI will become central to our daily lives. Despite industry growth, AI still has an inherent training data problem. Today, 85% of AI projects fail and 87% of employees agree that data quality issues are their primary obstacle.
Over the past two years, Sama and Mila have worked to address AI and machine learning development challenges. In addition to co-authoring research with Mila professors and doctoral students, Sama will collaborate on Mila’s AI for Humanity projects, leveraging its high-quality training data platform to drive the development of AI for good.
“As one of the top AI labs in the world, Mila is an incredible force for AI innovation,” said Wendy Gonzalez, CEO of Sama. “We are proud to work alongside Mila’s team of over 750 researchers, professors, scientists and students to develop the cutting-edge solutions leaders need to drive the AI industry forward, while leveraging bias-free and effective tech to positively impact the world around us.”
Internationally recognized for its significant contributions to machine learning, Mila was founded by Turing Award winner, Yoshua Bengio. The research institute collaborates with a wide variety of local, national, and international organizations to develop AI-driven projects, platforms, and partnerships to accelerate economic and social innovation. Since 2017, it has partnered with Université de Montréal and McGill University, closely linked with Polytechnique Montréal and HEC Montréal, to become the world’s largest academic research center in machine learning.
“When we first partnered with Sama back in 2019, the AI industry was still in its infancy; fast-forward to just two years later and artificial intelligence has become widely adopted across verticals and industries,” says Yoshua Bengio, Founder and Scientific Director of Mila. “The renewal of our partnership with Sama is a testament to their unwavering commitment to AI innovation and development as well as shared values of AI for good. We are happy to see Sama expanding its Montreal-based team and we look forward to continuing to work together to develop impactful solutions that will power tomorrow’s world.”
Through the partnership, Sama co-authored the first-ever workshop on Interactive Labeling and Data Augmentation for computer vision alongside Mila postdoc Sasha Luccioni and Professor Christian Gagné for ICCV, one of the most prestigious AI conferences in the world. Moreover, several Mila students who had the opportunity to intern at Sama through the partnership, have gone on to join the company full time.
In addition to its partnership with Mila, Sama is continuing to invest in Montreal as a hub for AI innovation. Not only is Sama’s premier AI R&D center located a block away from Mila’s offices, but the company plans to significantly expand its Montreal-based team to over 400.
About Sama
Sama provides high-quality training data that powers AI technology. The company’s platform is trusted by leading companies such as Google, NVIDIA, GM, and Walmart, to develop accurate machine learning models. Sama specializes in image, video, language, and sensor data annotation and validation for machine learning algorithms in industries including manufacturing and robotics, bio and medtech, autonomous vehicles, entertainment, e-commerce, retail, and agriculture. Driven by a mission to expand opportunities for underserved individuals through the digital economy, Sama has helped over 55,000 people lift themselves out of poverty. Its training and employment program were recently validated by an MIT-led Randomized Controlled Trial. For more information, visit www.sama.com.
About Mila
Founded by Professor Yoshua Bengio of the University of Montreal, Mila is an artificial intelligence research institute that brings together nearly 900 researchers specializing in machine learning. Based in Montreal, Mila’s mission is to be a global hub for scientific advances that inspire innovation and development of AI for the benefit of all. Mila is a non-profit organization recognized worldwide for its significant contributions to the field of deep learning, particularly in language modeling, machine translation, object recognition, and generative models. For more information, visit mila.quebec.
