The hype about data is matched only by the complexity of navigating and mining it for applicable uses. Above the chatter, companies are now saying simply, “Show me the application.”

In response, New York City-based Fast Forward Labs has sprung up to provide practical solutions that utilize data and machine learning. CEO and Founder Hilary Mason talked with Jeff Frick, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team, about how the company approaches its customers.

“Our mission is to help people understand what the capabilities are with data, data science and machine learning,” Mason said. Fast Forward Labs uses a holistic and creative approach to tailor solutions for companies. This may involve building prototype applications and technical advising, in addition to generally educating businesses on what machine learning and data can do for them.

Reading into it: Text and image analysis

A major technology that Fast Forward Labs is leveraging is text summarization.

“Language is really messy,” Mason told Frick, explaining that neural networks for language processing have only just recently made accurate summarization plausible. The company has used text summarization to help insurance companies generate plain language summaries from complex documents, as well as extract a single synopsis from many texts, such as a large number of product reviews.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity there for sort of better understanding the wisdom of the crowds or some social data as well,” she said.

In addition, Fast Forward Labs has also started showing companies how image analysis can be used, thanks to recent software developments that can tell users exactly what’s in a photo.

Watch the full interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE and theCUBE’s coverage of Fast Forward Labs Innovation Day.

Photo by SiliconANGLE