iMerit, a leader in software-delivered AI data, announced wide availability of its Scholars program. The global network of subject matter experts, handpicked for their specialized knowledge and cognitive skills, serves a large and urgent ongoing need for secure and high quality model tuning among Generative AI foundation model and applied AI customers.
Expertise as Infrastructure
The Generative AI arms race focuses on compute and algorithms, while iMerit focuses on the third pillar: expert-led data. iMerit Scholars curates and matches thousands of cognitive specialists, many with advanced degrees in computer science, medicine, biology, finance, law, and policy. They frequently have multilingual or multi-domain capabilities.
The launch comes at a pivotal moment as enterprises and research labs increasingly seek to differentiate their AI systems through specialized knowledge and human oversight. The last mile of specialization of these models relies on expert prompting and reasoning inputs by subject matter experts in domains like medicine, STEM, and coding. At the same time, outcomes are highly dependent on the quality and sophistication of the tuning data created by experts.
“Foundation models and their applications are moving into a crucial phase where they have to be tuned and validated by extremely clean expert-led data. Our Scholars team includes PhDs, MDs, lawyers, linguists, and engineers. Their exceptional problem-setting skills directly shape the quality and performance of the models,” said Radha Basu, CEO of iMerit. “Our decade-long background in AI data gives us deep insights into how to assemble the most creative and engaged experts to lead this next wave.”
Scholars is backed by Deep Reasoning Lab (DRL) – a specialized generative AI module in iMerit’s AI data software, Ango Hub. Ango DRL connects automated pipelines, model evaluators, and specialized human judgment at production scale. Ango DRL supports multi-domain and multimodal prompting, chain-of-thought reasoning and other interaction modes that allow the human expert to teach, question and correct models under development.
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“The industry needs this capability at a large scale but is also highly sensitive to the quality and variety of the tuning data. Scholars curates the most elite AI teachers,” said Robert Laing, VP of Global Specialist Workforce at iMerit. “It’s not just about degrees but about motivation, engagement and about a cognitive toolbox of skills like meta-cognition, critical thinking, creativity and cultural empathy. That’s the only way to be accountable for the mission-critical results iMerit is known for.”
Recent projects include ambient scribe tuning, where physicians shape a model to perform better at creating clinical notes from an audio recording of a doctor-patient interaction. In another assignment, mathematicians participated in a chain-of-thought project, where they improved the ability of the model to solve complex problems by iteratively coaching it past the failed steps in its reasoning. iMerit has also helped create language-vision models which use speech generation to describe the actions of an autonomous vehicle, thus improving safety and explainability.
“From the start, I felt as though I had already been part of the team for a long time. Communication was seamless, everyone was approachable and supportive, and we handled challenges with ease,” said Burak Ekseli, a Language Specialist, based in Turkey. “It’s been one of the most positive and enriching experiences I’ve had in this field, strengthening both my skills and my confidence.”
Source: PRNewswire
