- Fiddler Labs, which was launched last year, specializes in "explainable AI," specifically cloud software that helps ensure that the AI tools a business is using are bias-free and complies with regulations.
- The company was cofounded by Krishna Gade, a former Facebook engineer, who was part of the team that built a tool to help internal teams understand how the social network's News Feed algorithm works.
- "When you're to use AI, it becomes a black box or a quantitative algorithm," Gade told Business Insider. "That's where the problem comes from. How do you determine what's going on?"
- Here's the pitch deck Fiddler Labs used to raise $13 million from investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners.
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Artificial intelligence is the latest craze in the business world, helping companies do things faster and easier. But increasingly the question emerges: When you rely on AI to make decisions, are the outcomes always fair - or legal?
That's what inspired Krishna Gade, a former Facebook engineer, to launch Fiddler Labs, which specializes in "explainable AI," specifically cloud software that helps companies unlock the AI "black box" and figure out how exactly these types of systems come to their conclusions.
Founded in 2018, Fiddler Labs monitors and evaluates the AI tools a company has deployed to make sure they're actually helping the business. The company is still in its early stages, but in September raised a $10.2 million Series A round from investors including Lightspeed Venture Partners, bringing its total investment up to $13 million.
"When you're to use AI, it becomes a black box or a quantitative algorithm," Gade told Business Insider. "That's where the problem comes from. How do you determine what's going on?"
That question is critical amid growing concerns about the use of AI and machine learning for commercial purposes, particularly in regulated industries such as health care or banking.
"There are regulations coming up on AI which means companies need to build this transparency for their customers and regulators," he said. "Increasingly, machine learning and AI are seen as some sort of business risk…you need to make sure that it doesn't have bias in it, or doesn't have concerns that could cause customers to mistrust your products."
For example, a bank or lending company must be able to explain why its AI tool decided that a client was deemed a high credit risk, or why a certain loan application was rejected.
"So you need analysis, you need a kind of lens into the AI," he said.
Fiddler Labs' technology can offer such insights to enable a company to make the necessary changes, such as recommending tweaks to algorithms or the data used for a company's AI tools, Gade said.
Gade understood the importance of "explainable AI" at Facebook where he was part of the team that built tools to help clarify for internal teams how the social network's vaunted News Feed algorithm was picking content to be displayed.
That work led to the idea for Fiddler Labs, he said: "Pretty much every company in the world that is introducing machine learning, that process workflow will need explainability for various reasons."
Here's the pitch deck Fiddler Labs used to raise $13 million from investors, including Lightspeed Venture Partners: