Developers and tech professionals are bustling to find the best applications for data and machine learning these days.

Fast Forward Labs is taking a zany and surprisingly fruitful approach to winning the race, according to Kathryn Hume, director of sales and marketing: Throw it in the water, and see if it can swim. The development phase at the company is a space for no-holds-barred experimentation, she told Jeff Frick, cohost of theCUBE, from the SiliconANGLE Media team.

Collaborating with strange bedfellows

One method of sussing out unsuspected new uses for technology is collaborating with strange bedfellows for a tech company — namely artists, who essentially experiment freely with the technology and report back with the creative new ways they were able to utilize it. As opposed to the companies they routinely work with, artists don’t have specific objectives, and this allows them to dive into the technology and explore it fluidly.

The New York City-based startup prides itself on its quirky approaches in an industry many consider, well, technical. “We like weird stuff, and we try to explore things that are on the fringe and use that to influence creative applications and companies,” Hume said.

The machine learning scarecrow

When host Jeff Frick broached the topic of employee displacement that some warn is the end game of machine learning, Hume offered a nuanced dismissal of the fears. We don’t yet know to what extent machine learning can replace highly skilled, middle-class workers, she states, adding that the technology is still nascent, so “before we think about the robots taking over, let’s actually make robots that work.”

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