Ask HN: Would you use a Machine Learning Service?

Hey Guys,

I am a graduate student specializing Machine Learning. Next to that I am also working for a (european) Social Network site. Right now I am busy implementing implemented a system to filter spam for them. We were also discussing if we should make use of a company which implements a general propose spam filter for websites. But we think that by making use of the information that we have on our site and that are specific to us, we could improve the system a lot. I was thinking, that a lot of other sites could benefit from using machine learning, but that the field can be really confusing at first, with all the different algorithms and methods.

So my idea was to start a general propose Machine Learning service. The service would not require the user to have any knowledge of Artificial Intelligence whatsoever. You just upload your dataset and you are good to go. You can image how big of a disappointment is was when it turned out that someone at Google already had the same idea. I am have not been able to try their Data Prediction API yet, as it’s for US customers only at the moment. I think though that there is still enough room to do something differently then they do. For example allow different types of data (say images) or provide better customer service.

So my question to you guys is: Are there any of you who would be interested in such a service? And if so what is your application? Judging from the comments here there were quite some people who enrolled in the Google API beta. Did you just do so, because it’s Google (e.g. to compare it to your own implementations)? Are there maybe people here who would like to do something that is not possible in Google API ?