Agile Modeling: Image Classification with Domain Experts in the Loop

Machine learning is not readily accessible to domain experts from many fields, blocked by issues ranging from data mining to model training. We argue that domain experts should be at the center of the modeling process, and we introduce the "Agile Modeling" problem: the process of turning any visual concept from an idea into a well-trained ML classifier through a human-in-the-loop interaction driven by the domain expert in a way that minimizes domain expert time. We propose a solution to the problem that enables domain experts to create classifiers in real-time and build upon recent advances in image-text co-embeddings such as CLIP or ALIGN to implement it. We show the feasibility of this solution through live experiments with 14 domain experts, each modeling their own concept. Finally, we compare a domain expert driven process with the traditional crowdsourcing paradigm and find that difficult concepts see pronounced improvements with domain experts.