Artificial Intelligence (AI) has entered our daily lives like never before and we are yet to unravel the many other ways in which it could flourish. Spanning speech recognition, virtual personal assistants, video games, smart cars and fraud detection, we can witness AI taking leaps of progress towards the futuristic vision of AI-driven tech-world (think of Salesforce’s Einstein, modern chatbots!).
The market for artificial intelligence (AI) technologies is flourishing. Beyond the hype and the heightened media attention, the numerous startups and the internet giants racing to acquire them, there is a significant increase in investment and adoption by enterprises. Last year that 38% of enterprises are already using AI, growing to 62% by 2018. And as per another forecast, the AI market will grow from $8 billion in 2016 to more than $47 billion in 2020. And if you look at the Artificial Intelligence under development, The future impact of Artificial Intelligence is quite unpredictable. Here are some of the AI Technologies:
Natural Language Generation: It is an AI sub-discipline that converts data into text, enabling computers to communicate ideas with perfect accuracy. It is used in customer service to generate reports and market summaries and is offered by companies like Attivio, Automated Insights, Cambridge Semantics, Digital Reasoning, Lucidworks, Narrative Science, SAS, and Yseop.
Speech Recognition: Transcribe and transform human speech into format useful for computer applications. Currently used in interactive voice response systems and mobile applications. Siri is just one of the systems that can understand you. Every day, more and more systems are created that can transcribe human language, reaching hundreds of thousands through voice-response interactive systems and mobile apps.
Virtual Agents: A virtual agent is nothing more than a computer agent or a program capable of interacting with humans. The most common example of this kind of technology are chatbots. Virtual Agents are currently being used for customer service and support and as smart home Managers. Some of the companies that provide virtual agents include Amazon, Apple, Artificial Solutions, Assist AI, Creative Virtual, Google, IBM, IPsoft, Microsoft and Satisfi.
Machine Learning Platforms: Nowadays, computers can also easily learn, and they can become incredibly intelligent! Machine learning (ML) is a subdiscipline of computer science and a branch of AI. Its goal is to develop techniques that allow computers to learn. By providing algorithms, APIs (Application Programming Interface), development and training tools, big data, applications and other machines, ML platforms are gaining more and more traction every day. They are currently mainly being used for prediction and classification. Some of the companies selling ML platforms include Amazon, Fractal Analytics, Google, H2O.ai, Microsoft, SAS, Skytree and Adext.
AI Technology makes hardware much friendlier: Through new graphic and central processing units and processing devices specifically designed and structured to execute AI-oriented tasks. And if you haven’t seen them already, expect the imminent appearance and wide acceptance of AI-optimized silicon chips that can be inserted right into your portable devices and elsewhere. You can get access to this technology through Alluviate, Cray, Google, IBM, Intel, and Nvidia.
Decision Management : Intelligent machines are capable of introducing rules and logic to AI systems so you that can use them for initial setup/training, ongoing maintenance, and tuning. Currently used in a wide range of enterprise applications, mostly `involving prediction or classification. Sample vendors: Amazon, Fractal Analytics, Google, H2O.ai, Microsoft, SAS, Skytree.
AI-optimized Hardware: Graphics processing units (GPU) and appliances specifically designed and architected to efficiently run AI-oriented computational jobs. Currently primarily making a difference in deep learning applications. Sample vendors: Alluviate, Cray, Google, IBM, Intel, Nvidia.
Deep Learning Platforms: Deep learning platforms use a unique form of ML that involves artificial neural circuits with various abstraction layers that can mimic the human brain, processing data and creating patterns for decision making. Currently it is mainly being used to recognize patterns and classify applications that are only compatible with large-scale data sets. Deep Instinct, Ersatz Labs, Fluid AI, MathWorks, Peltarion, Saffron Technology and Sentient Technologies all have deep learning options worthy of exploring.
Biometrics: Enable more natural interactions between humans and machines, including but not limited to image and touch recognition, speech, and body language. Currently used primarily in market research. Sample vendors: 3VR, Affectiva, Agnitio, FaceFirst, Sensory, Synqera, Tahzoo.
Robotic Process Automation: Robotic processes automation uses scripts and methods that mimic and automate human tasks to support corporate processes. It is particularly useful for situations when hiring humans for a specific job or task is too expensive or inefficient. The good example is Adext, a platform that automates digital advertising processes using AI, saving businesses from devoting hours to mechanical and repetitive tasks.
It’s a solution that lets you make the most of your human talent and move employees into more strategic and creative positions, so their actions can really make an impact on the company’s growth. Advanced Systems Concepts, Automation Anywhere, Blue Prism, UiPath, and WorkFusion are other examples of robotic processes automation companies.
Text Analytics and NLP: Natural language processing (NLP) uses and supports text analytics by facilitating the understanding of sentence structure and meaning, sentiment, and intent through statistical and machine learning methods. Currently it is used in fraud detection and security, a wide range of automated assistants, and applications for mining unstructured data. Sample vendors: Basis Technology, Coveo, Expert System, Indico, Knime, Lexalytics, Linguamatics, Mindbreeze, Sinequa, Stratifyd, Synapsify.
Cyber Defense: Cyber defense is a computer network defense mechanism that focuses on preventing, detecting and providing timely responses to attacks or threats to infrastructure and information. Recurrent neural networks, which are capable of processing sequences of inputs, can be used in combination with ML techniques to create supervised learning technologies, which uncover suspicious user activity and detect up to 85% of all cyber attacks.
Knowledge Worker Aid: While some are rightfully concerned about AI replacing people in the workplace, let’s not forget that AI technology also has the potential to vastly help employees in their work, especially those in knowledge work. In fact, the automation of knowledge work has been listed as the #2 most disruptive emerging tech trend. The medical and legal professions, which are heavily reliant on knowledge workers, is where workers will increasingly use AI as a diagnostic tool. There is an increasing number of companies working on technologies in this area.
Emotion Recognition: This technology allows software to “read” the emotions on a human face using advanced image processing or audio data processing. We are now at the point where we can capture “micro-expressions,” or subtle body language cues, and vocal intonation that betrays a person’s feelings.
Law enforcers can use this technology to try to detect more information about someone during interrogation. But it also has a wide range of applications for marketers. There are increasing numbers of startups working in this area. Beyond Verbal analyzes audio inputs to describe a person’s character traits, including how positive, how excited, angry or moody they are. Affectiva’s Emotion AI is used in the gaming, automotive, robotics, education, healthcare industries, and other fields, to apply facial coding and emotion analytics from face and voice data.
Image Recognition: Image recognition is the process of identifying and detecting an object or feature in a digital image or video, and AI is increasingly being stacked on top of this technology to great effect.
Artificial Intelligence has many achievements to its credit, it is still in the process of achieving its future plans which will make real revolution, “AI’ revolution, which will transform our existing world into totally to a different level. Already there are many business benefits gained from AI technologies today. Let’s wait and watch.
