Episode 51: On the Use of AI with Benjamin Tuttle, Chief Technology Officer of Arturo.ai
In this week’s episode of Subscriptions: Scaled, we discuss the use of AI with Benjamin Tuttle, Chief Technology Officer of Arturo.ai.
In the episode, we learn everything from the details of Arturo’s unique business model to exactly how the company uses AI.
Keep reading to learn more about the episode.
Arturo
Arturo empowers insurance carriers by using artificial intelligence to provide the most up-to-date property characteristics in seconds.
The episode begins with Benjamin explaining Arturo’s unique business model and how the brand was first established.
Benjamin explains that Arturo came out of a corporate insurance startup company called American Family.
American Family started looking at whether they could use remotely sensed imagery from satellites from airplanes. This idea was to improve the data points that go into their risk decisions, policy underwriting, and responses to claims and renewals.
The company discovered that it was possible. So in 2019, American Family started Arturo. Now Arturo uses multiple aerial and satellite providers to bring data together.
Arturo also uses machine learning models and computer vision to analyze imagery in seconds.
This helps to check upwards of 50 characteristics about a property, which allows insurers to determine risk, and whether or not anything has changed.
Currently, Arturo is working with AI company Hailo to allow people to make decisions quickly.
When people are about to underwrite a new home, Arturo’s AI can help them with the following questions and more:
Does it have a pool?
What’s the roof material?
What’s the condition of the roof?
How long before the roof needs to be replaced?
The previous methods of answering these questions would involve physically sending a person to the property. Around 24 hours later, they would generate a report and send back a PDF with information collected from this manual inspection. This would typically cost quite a hefty amount of money.
Now, with Arturo, it’s possible to get this information much cheaper and in almost real-time.
Benjamin explains that Arturo even works with some who use the company in their online point-of-quote services to inform a client who is requesting an insurance quote for a property.
Using AI
Later in the episode, Benjamin discusses how Arturo uses AI in more detail.
Benjamin explains that Arturo has a complete series of internal machine learning and computer vision models that the team uses.
Arturo also has a whole internal pipeline of how they perform labeling training and develop and refine new and existing models.
The company built an internal team that performs data quality, labeling, and training. They work with machine learning engineers to ensure that the company is receiving the best core data.
Benjamin shares that as Arturo tries to expand around the globe, the team ensures that they’re receiving enough samples to avoid any geographic bias or bias across different camera sensors. This can sometimes happen whenever a team works with a new camera, or in a new geographic region.
The Effects of Covid-19
Benjamin also speaks about Covid-19 and the effects it’s had on how the Arturo team works.
In 2019, the plan was for Arturo to be a Chicago-based corporation with a nice office downtown. Benjamin was living in Chicago at the time.
The company was getting ready to sign a new lease before the Covid-19 situation began in February 2020. However, the CEO felt uncomfortable signing the lease with the news of the growing pandemic.
Sure enough, two weeks after the CEO decided not to sign the lease, everyone had to start working from home.
Instead of looking at the pandemic negatively and thinking about the things that people couldn’t do, the team decided to look at what new opportunities the situation presented.
So, the company went remote. They also decided to hire people in other markets and pull from their networks of talent to grow the business.
Regarding the pandemic, it seems that for Arturo, when one opportunity went away, a new one opened.
Arturo doesn’t have any physical offices right now. They have people working remotely all over the world. And they’re making it work.
Expanding Arturo
After Covid-19, Arturo started expanding. They’ve since grown significantly in the Chicago, Boulder, Denver, Dallas, and Austin regions, where several people in the company have solid networks and connections they were able to pull on.
The company also started to hire people in other parts of the country when the candidates were the right fit for the job. Benjamin is growing a small team of engineers in Northern Virginia who, like himself, came out of Intel backgrounds and needed a break from that.
There’s also a growing team in Munich, Germany, where the company is getting closer to a lot of the big insurance agencies there.
The Future of Arturo
We also learn about the future plans of Arturo. Benjamin discusses the importance of having discipline, especially in the early stages. We discover that while Benjamin expects Arturo to remain B2B, they wouldn’t shut down the idea of going B2C, too.
Benjamin explains that their team in Munich is leading the commercial efforts and figuring out what that product will look like. The company hopes to start bringing commercial development to the market with a few early-stage customers next year.
He explains that the process of working with commercial properties is significantly different from residential properties, so it’s a new learning experience for the team.
Benjamin shares that there are definitely some exciting opportunities for Arturo down the road. The earlier ones will likely be verticals closer to insurance, like mortgage lending and financial investments in real estate — things of that nature where people are still very interested in understanding the risk around investment.
Toward the end of the episode, Benjamin discusses the importance of consumer privacy and regulation. Benjamin also shares how the team makes important decisions in the company and a whole lot more throughout the episode.
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