Synthetic Data

Companies may often have mixes of real and synthetic data,  early on we used simulations to create streams of data that were realistic for particular context. Synthetic data can also be assembled from snippets of data from other sources. Behavioral data is a good example. Good to think of a plan to make this available.

Deep learning with synthetic data will democratize the tech industry
From Evan Nisselson in TechCrunch.

" .... Synthetic data is computer-generated data that mimics real data; in other words, data that is created by a computer, not a human. Software algorithms can be designed to create realistic simulated, or “synthetic,” data.

This synthetic data then assists in teaching a computer how to react to certain situations or criteria, replacing real-world-captured training data. One of the most important aspects of real or synthetic data is to have accurate labels so computers can translate visual data to have meaning.

Since 2012, we at LDV Capital have been investing in deep technical teams that leverage computer vision, machine learning and artificial intelligence to analyze visual data across any business sector, such as healthcare, robotics, logistics, mapping, transportation, manufacturing and much more. Many startups we encounter have the “cold start” problem of not having enough quality labelled data to train their computer algorithms. A system cannot draw any inferences for users or items about which it hasn’t yet gathered sufficient information.

Startups can gather their own contextually relevant data or partner with others to gather relevant data, such as retailers for data of human shopping behaviors or hospitals for medical data. Many early-stage startups are solving their cold start problem by creating data simulators to generate contextually relevant data with quality labels in order to train their algorithms.  ... "