The open secret of the artificial intelligence boom is that there are too few AI experts to meet the demand from all the companies looking to harness the technology. Several software makers are working to fill the gap with tools designed to automate AI development.

The latest provider to have jumped on the bandwagon is H2O.ai Inc., which today unveiled a machine learning platform geared towards users with varying technical backgrounds. Dubbed Driverless AI, it’s equipped with a set of ready-made models that cover common use cases for the technology. Another set of algorithms coded directly into the software helps identify the best choice for each project.

Once users have settled on a model, they can start training it for their desired task using an automated calibration mechanism. The platform is capable of fine-tuning neural networks based on what kind of data they process in order to improve the accuracy of the results.

Driverless AI runs training sessions on H2O’s namesake machine learning engine, which is one of the most popular open-source AI engines on the market. The startup evidently hopes the platform’s capabilities accessible to a broader range of users will help attract more enterprise adopters. Seeing how even tech giants such as Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc. face a shortage of machine learning talent, the market for the product could be large. 

But it’s not without competition. One of the players H2O will face off against is DataRobot Inc., a well-funded startup that similarly focuses on easing the development of AI services. It recently secured a $54 million investment led by venture capital titan New Enterprise Associates to step up customer acquisition efforts. Like Driverless AI, DataRobot’s platform can automatically test different variations of a model until finding the one most suitable for the task at hand.

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