Get involved with AI — now

By Daniel Pitch­ford, Robert Wool­liams and Geor­gios Kipouros of The AI Sum­mit edi­to­r­i­al team

AI is here and it’s already trans­form­ing many indus­tries, with busi­ness gear­ing up for the fourth indus­tri­al rev­o­lu­tion. In the past 12 months we have seen demand for AI in the enter­prise increase expo­nen­tial­ly, with the world’s largest com­pa­nies invest­ing well over half a bil­lion dol­lars into AI-cen­tric research.

Indeed, some of the biggest recent suc­cess sto­ries in AI have been prac­ti­cal appli­ca­tions in spe­cif­ic indus­try sec­tors. AI Busi­ness researched FTSE 100 and For­tune 500 organ­i­sa­tions in the first half of 2016 and found 32 per cent are already imple­ment­ing some form of AI, with 75 per cent invest­ing in machine and deep-learn­ing appli­ca­tions, 45 per cent in nat­ur­al lan­guage pro­cess­ing and 15 per cent in image recog­ni­tion tech­nolo­gies.

With the increase in AI uptake across the enter­prise land­scape, there have been many new oppor­tu­ni­ties for tech­nol­o­gy providers from emerg­ing star­tups through to long-stand­ing giants such as Microsoft, Google, TCS and IBM.

Accord­ing to Microsoft’s chief envi­sion­ing offi­cer Dave Coplin: “AI is at the heart of the company’s vision,” hav­ing recent­ly announced Microsoft Cog­ni­tive Ser­vices, a new col­lec­tion of intel­li­gence and knowl­edge APIs (appli­ca­tion pro­gram­ming inter­faces).

the world’s largest com­pa­nies have invest­ed well over half a bil­lion dol­lars into AI-cen­tric research

IBM Wat­son, IBM’s ver­sa­tile and mar­ket-lead­ing cog­ni­tive plat­form, has found wide appli­ca­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in health­care diag­nos­tics. IBM Watson’s Euro­pean direc­tor Paul Chong fre­quent­ly under­lines that in the next ten years our pro­fes­sion­al lives will be inex­orably influ­enced by AI and cog­ni­tive sys­tems.

All indus­tries are set to be impact­ed by AI tech­nolo­gies in a vari­ety of dif­fer­ent ways, but some are already see­ing strong results and promis­ing return on invest­ment with ear­ly adop­tion. Among FTSE 100 and For­tune 500 organ­i­sa­tions, AI Busi­ness iden­ti­fied trans­port, finan­cial ser­vices and retail as the sec­tors with the strongest uptake of AI at this stage, with 87 per cent, 68 per cent and 53 per cent respec­tive­ly.

In addi­tion, logis­tics, legal, health­care and man­u­fac­tur­ing are invest­ing heav­i­ly in AI, many in joint projects that also make the most of advances in robot­ics and automa­tion.
The progress of Google’s self-dri­ving car has been a main­stay of AI news in the trans­port and auto­mo­tive sec­tor. But many oth­er major man­u­fac­tur­ers are now invest­ing in this space – Toy­ota, Bosch, Ford, Mer­cedes and Audi to name but a few.

AI work in the sec­tor is not restrict­ed to the roads. Phillip East­er, direc­tor of mobile apps and wear­ables at Amer­i­can Air­lines, hails AI as “the next gold­en age”. British Air­ways’ own­er IAG is also invest­ing heav­i­ly in the field, recent­ly win­ning Best Inno­va­tion in AI at The AIcon­ics Awards.

The finan­cial ser­vices sec­tor has seen some of the most sig­nif­i­cant devel­op­ments; bank­ing, insur­ance, pro­fes­sion­al ser­vices, pri­vate equi­ty and asset man­age­ment are gear­ing up to greater effi­cien­cy para­me­ters, improved cus­tomer ser­vice plat­forms and enhanced risk man­age­ment.

Nation­wide Build­ing Soci­ety have imple­ment­ed Tata Con­sul­tan­cy Ser­vices’ ignio plat­form to trans­form IT ser­vices for the com­pa­ny. RBS’s intel­li­gent assis­tant Luvo recent­ly made head­lines in dig­i­tal cus­tomer sup­port. KPMG have part­nered with IBM Wat­son to assess mass­es of struc­tured and unstruc­tured audit data cog­ni­tive­ly. Look­ing ahead, PwC’s lead of trans­for­ma­tion and inno­va­tion Michael Ren­dell says: “AI will become part of the firm’s DNA.”

Busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers large­ly agree we are only at the begin­ning of what is expect­ed to be a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from busi­ness as usu­al

In the retail sec­tor, Ama­zon has been using machine-learn­ing algo­rithms to rec­om­mend prod­ucts for years, and US com­pa­nies includ­ing Kohl’s and Wal­mart are invest­ing heav­i­ly in pre­dict­ing what their shop­pers want.

Tai­lor­ing adver­tis­ing and mar­ket­ing to each indi­vid­ual cus­tomer is also an area where AI offers a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. David Har­ris, senior vice pres­i­dent of IT at Burber­ry, says the com­pa­ny is cur­rent­ly for­mu­lat­ing their own AI strat­e­gy, with chat­bots in ser­vice func­tions and insights from pat­tern recog­ni­tion firm­ly on the agen­da for the imme­di­ate future.

The legal sec­tor is expect­ing a pro­found impact, with many law firms say­ing that with­in ten years new attor­neys and para­le­gals could be replaced by AI tech­nolo­gies. Last Sep­tem­ber in the UK, Berwin Leighton Pais­ner imple­ment­ed RAVN Sys­tems’ Applied Cog­ni­tive Engine. In the US in May, Bak­er­Hostetler announced they had employed their first robot lawyer, built by Sil­i­con Val­ley start­up ROSS Intel­li­gence and pow­ered by IBM Wat­son. America’s largest law firm by rev­enue, Lath­am & Watkins, is test dri­ving new IBM Wat­son-based appli­ca­tions, includ­ing cog­ni­tive and pre­dic­tive cod­ing tech­nolo­gies.

While a num­ber of ini­tia­tives are already deliv­er­ing results, busi­ness and tech­nol­o­gy lead­ers large­ly agree we are only at the begin­ning of what is expect­ed to be a sig­nif­i­cant depar­ture from busi­ness as usu­al. Indeed, Josh Sut­ton, head of AI for Publicis.Sapient, speaks of a par­a­digm shift, a sys­temic change based on AI help­ing to expand what’s human­ly pos­si­ble.

AI Busi­ness found that FTSE100 and For­tune 500 organ­i­sa­tions are plan­ning to invest a com­bined $25 bil­lion in devel­op­ing and imple­ment­ing AI tech­nolo­gies over the next three years alone. Not sur­pris­ing­ly, 82 per cent of our respon­dents told us they are look­ing to imple­ment some form of AI in the next 12 to 18 months. The Bank of Amer­i­ca projects a $95-bil­lion growth for intel­li­gent machines over the next five years and For­rester pre­dicts that 25 per cent of jobs will be impact­ed by AI in some way by 2019.

But the sta­tis­tics will not look after them­selves – it’s down to the busi­ness lead­ers, devel­op­ers and con­sumers alike to bear them out. Now is the time to get involved with AI, secure a com­pet­i­tive edge and trans­form pro­duc­tiv­i­ty through­out your organ­i­sa­tion.