Testing and iterating on machine learning models can be time-consuming, especially once companies try to deploy them in production systems to gather better data. Lyft uses its simulation tools as a way to pre-test models, because it has a limited ability to run experiments on the live version of its service.

The ride-hailing company is currently in the process of making those internal systems ready for public scrutiny, Karaman said. “We’ll start with some academia outreach in the next coming months, because we think this will be very relevant, this simulator to understand early signals, or at least outliers,” he said.