Colin Swaney, Senior Research Software Engineer & Alice Fang, Research Software Engineer

Machine learning is the key to turning unstructured data, such as video and text, into research inputs. However, machine learning is not typically a part of a social scientist’s training, nor can social scientists be expected to stay up-to-date with the latest methods in the field. Blackfish is a project started at DDSS that makes it easy for social scientists to use machine learning in their research by providing APIs and user interfaces for standardized tasks, such as text generation and image classification, hosted on Princeton University infrastructure (i.e., free!). The platform serves as an alternative to expensive and proprietary MLaaS hosted on public cloud services. Our RSE group is leading all aspects of the initial development of the system.