Trains, planes, and AI appeal: How Coactive is charting the course with user-friendly systems

There’s no doubt that AI is the leading topic of conversation, even beyond computer science labs and far-fetched science fiction films. These days AI is truly showing up everywhere: on the news, in board rooms, over tea with grandma - it’s endless. How companies interested in leveraging this technology are creating user-friendly systems that allow customers, who may not have the technical expertise, to engage with AI is going to be a major factor in determining which of them thrive. As infrastructure software engineer Oswaldo hints - Coactive’s already ahead of the field. Read on to grab a sneak peek into just how Coactive is creating a unique path for the use of AI.

Oswaldo! It’s so lovely to chat with you. Catch our readers up and tell us about yourself.

Likewise! If it’s okay, I’ll mix a little of the personal with the professional to give you a full picture?

I would expect nothing less! You’re the engineer on this train.

Funny that you would mention trains: I’m actually a machine learning engineer today due to the influence of trains on my life. I was born and raised in Colombia - where my dad was a mechanical train engineer. Growing up, my home was always full of tools or things related to engineering or mechanics, which inspired me to pursue mechanical engineering when I reached university. It was there that I dove deep into my interests of mathematics and physics, but while pursuing my major I stumbled upon programming as another component of engineering. It was truly love at first sight and I’ve been coding ever since.

Wow, it looks like I got us on the "right track" back there! How wonderful you were able to follow in your dad’s footsteps and, while doing so, find your true passion. What do you think it was about programming that really rang your bell?

Train puns - nice.

Well, I’ve always been attracted to the thrill of solving difficult problems, and machine learning offered me the opportunity to engage deeply with questions of all sorts that require really innovative answers. There’s no doubt that I have the freedom to be on the cutting edge of the field. That’s part of the reason why I was so excited to work with Coactive.

Tell me more. What inspired you to hop onto the Coactive caravan?

The biggest thing is definitely the technical challenge. With some previous work, I would get bored easily when I was not challenged enough by my assignments. At an innovative start-up like Coactive, I really enjoy that we’re not moving at a slow pace - but instead, I’m really encouraged here to think outside of the box and stretch myself to solve complex problems.  

Of course, right up there with the exciting work I get to do… is the Coactive team. Not only are the people at Coactive great at what they do, but they’re also amazing people. Everyone has just been so kind to me, and I truly value that in the jobs that I do.

That means a lot, especially since you’re joining us all the way from Colombia! Now that we know what brought you here, what’s the most exciting challenge you’re currently working on?

Without a doubt, the production environment for the Coactive platform. This is something that I’ve been working on - preparing and developing the platform for customer use. Building and modifying our infrastructure for a production-ready environment, so customers will enjoy their experience using our tools, has been a lot of fun. Anticipating client needs and seamlessly incorporating them into our system is something I am really excited about, because we take customer experience very seriously. It is a high stakes task, because AI can be intimidating for clients who aren’t used to using it, but I’m confident in the work of our team.

Yes, we love confidence! Since you’re so close to the creation of this production environment, is there anything you feel like the Coactive engine is doing that’s unique?

Of course! Something that’s particularly different for our platform is that we’re managing a lot of data, which typically takes a lot of time to process. Some other applications that work with that amount of data commonly have a pretty poor user experience, because customers have to wait for long periods of time to receive results. What’s cool about the Coactive platform is that the way it was coded allows for real-time requests and answers from our system. I believe our customers will love interacting with our platform, because they will get the results to their queries really quickly.

[Coactive AI would like to congratulate Oswaldo on his recent engagement!]

That sounds like something people will gladly get on board with! Are there any other ways Coactive is improving user-experience?

Another way that we’re doing things differently to better the customer-experience is that we have both a UI and an API version. So, if you’re someone who enjoys coding you can use the API or SDK, but if you’re not super technical, that’s alright - you can use the UI. I love the idea that we’re creating access to the insights of visual data to everyone, not just those knee-deep in the ML field!

Creating an accessible system is definitely something that users won’t want to flyover. Thanks for taking the time to chat with us, Oswaldo, you really got our gears moving!

You’re welcome! I’m always happy to be of service.

Culture is our number one product at Coactive AI. We build our teams around collaboration, inclusivity, and daily learning. We’re also the best at what we do, which is revolutionizing how unstructured image data is analyzed. Check out our job openings.