Applying Academics: How Coactive is leveraging the intellect of interns

Often the contributions of interns are under acknowledged or they aren’t given ample opportunity to fully flex their brilliance. That’s where Coactive is different. Meet Ahmed Ahmed. He is a Machine Learning intern at Coactive who is truly treated as an influential member of the team. In this blog, he highlights what drew him to joining Coactive for an extended internship, rather than diving directly into graduate school. Read on to see how Coactive is seriously leveraging his talents to build incredible solutions for our users.

Ahmed, it is such an honor to interview someone so esteemed as yourself!

Ehh… I wouldn’t get carried away. Everyone at Coactive has really impressive resumes.

They do! But also - so do you. I hear congratulations are in order for one of Stanford’s newest Knight-Hennessy scholars!

Oh wow! Yes, thank you! I’m super excited to join the ranks of the Knight-Hennessy scholars that came before me at Stanford University and dive head first into pursuing my Computer Science doctoral degree in the fall.

That must have been where you got the word “esteemed” from. I appreciate the love.

Yes, exactly. It is such a prestigious fellowship, and here at Coactive we like to give folks their flowers. Maybe you can help our readers understand why you decided to intern at Coactive before enrolling in graduate school?

Coming to intern with Coactive before pursuing my PhD was surprisingly not that hard of a decision. I had been initially weary of the start-up world, because I heard many horror stories about toxic cultures only concerned with pushing out features and forgoing an inclusive environment. But then, I met Cody!

I should probably back-up a little bit and tell the fuller story, because there’s important context that I’m already missing.

Please do! Think of this as prep for your first lecture as a doctoral student…

Haha, it’s never too early to start prepping. Well, I actually also attended Stanford as an undergrad - which is how I met Cody. There, I majored in Mathematical and Computational Science (fancy Stanford speak for Applied Math and Statistics). I also stuck around to earn my Master’s degree in Computer Science. Across that time period, Cody was the cool PhD student who helped me navigate my experience within the CS department.

Over time, the topic of our conversation drifted toward some of the similar negative experiences we had while working and/or interning at larger companies as Black men in big tech. It was clear from our discussions that culture was at the top of Cody’s mind and that he was really dedicated to building something new that was truly inclusive from the ground up. Meeting the Coactive squad confirmed to me how seriously Cody thought through the foundations of company culture, and I was truly excited by the opportunity to work with incredibly talented people at a unique company - even if for a shorter time period.

Our dedication to our culture is something we’re definitely proud of. What drew you intellectually to Coactive?

Indulge me while I nerd out a bit. Like I said, I majored in both Applied Math and Statistics, but what I didn’t mention was that I also minored in African and African American Studies. I have always been attracted to fields and intellectual scholarship which contribute to understanding the greater cultural and historical contexts we live in, as well as how those contexts contribute to overarching inequalities we all experience. Even though I’m a huge math lover, I always knew I didn’t want to pursue this work in a vacuum. I love machine learning (ML) and I want the work that I do to be useful for and advantageous to historically disadvantaged people. Coactive is not just thinking about how to leverage technology to support visual and image data with no concern for social context like most companies. The team is solving some of the greatest technological challenges of our time, while also being mindful of how what we produce can and will impact individual people and larger communities.

An academic and an advocate! Now that you’re here, what is something that is happening at Coactive that is most exciting for you?

I love that as an intern I have been given the guidance and freedom to do more than grab coffee for the office. (I’ve actually never been asked to do something like that!). Instead, the team has really leveraged my talents and as a result, I feel like I’m able to freely contribute here. I’ve been thoroughly encouraged to think outside of the box and lean into eccentric ideas when coming up with solutions. For instance, I just finished creating a feature that allows customers to use natural language to search through a dataset for relevant images and videos. My contribution is really going to help us leverage multimodal data in a brand new way by making it more accessible to non-technical users, which is incredibly exciting!

Coactive is actually on a path to unlock all kinds of data, not just visual. The natural language search feature will make our already very cost-efficient solution that much easier to use and more expressive - while not giving up very much on performance. Actually, it was through interesting conversations with users about the need for a flexible and straightforward search that we determined the need for this feature. Turns out it’s easier for most folks to write in plain English than learn the intricacies of SQL! I think that many academics forget about broader audiences and I’m grateful Coactive gave me the opportunity to ground my ideas. We’re working together to continue designing in ways that get customers exactly what they need.

How fantastic that Coactive is truly leveraging your talents. Tell us, is there anything that has surprised you since joining?

Because I knew Cody before coming on and previously worked in ML, there’s not much that has surprised me about any isolated project that I’ve been assigned. However, what I will say surprised me is the sheer quality of product that we have been able to build given just how small the team is. When you’ve got a company that is our size, it’s a common thing to make a research demo that looks impressive but maybe doesn’t function as promised. Coactive’s user experience is very intuitive and visually appealing and has the capability to do very powerful and interesting things. Our back-end is incredible, again especially given our numbers, because it is very clear how all of the pieces fit and they all work together really efficiently. It has been my experience, on the research side, that ML researchers or small teams don’t often think about building scalable and efficient systems, but rather just like to build cute demos.

Finding the bridge between research and application is really key in this industry. As a last round-up, is there anything that others might find surprising about you, scholar?

It’s funny that you keep alluding to scholarship throughout this. So, my first and last name are the same: Ahmed. I am Sudanese-American and in Sudanese culture, first names carry a lot of weight and meaning. The name Ahmed is typically associated with a “wise person” and it is something families give children when they aspire that they grow up to be a doctor or scholar. While my family or last name is Ahmed, it is also my first name - due to the Sudanese naming tradition of naming the first born son after a grandfather. His name is also Ahmed, and he also happens to be one of the first modern academics from Sudan. It sounds dramatic, like I was destined for scholarship and academia, but funnily (and thankfully) my parents didn’t tell me this until a few years ago. They just provided the right environment and I sort of grew into my lifelong love of learning.

Well we simply cannot wait until we’re able to call you Dr. Ahmed Ahmed! In the meantime, future-Dr. Ahmed, it’s been an absolute pleasure to have you school us on what your time as an intern has been like.

Culture is our number one product, and it was our first ever release. We pride ourselves on having a truly collaborative and ever-learning team. We’re also the industry leaders for analyzing unstructured image data. Are you ready to join the next revolution in machine learning? Check out our job openings.