When the Power of the Crowd Meets the Intelligence of the Middleware

The data gluttony of AI is well known: Data fuels the artificial intelligence. Technologies that help to gather the needed data are then essential, among which the IoT. However, the deployment of IoT solutions raises significant challenges, especially regarding the resource and financial costs at stake. It is our view that mobile crowdsensing, aka phone sensing, has a major role to play because it potentially contributes massive data at a relatively low cost. Still, crowdsensing is useless, and even harmful, if the contributed data are not properly analyzed. This paper surveys our work on the development of systems facing this challenge, which also illustrates the virtuous circles of AI. We specifically focus on how intelligent crowdsensing middleware leverages on-device machine learning to enhance the reported physical observations. Keywords: Crowdsensing, Middleware, Online learning.