Business Improvement and Social media

The AI Index Report tracks, collates, distills, and visualizes data related to artificial intelligence. Its mission is to provide unbiased, rigorously vetted, and globally sourced data for policymakers, researchers, executives, journalists, and the general public to develop a more thorough and nuanced understanding of the complex field of AI. The report aims to be the world’s most credible and authoritative source for data and insights about AI.

Mazin Gilbert has an ambitious goal. As vice president of advanced technologies at AT&T, Gilbert wants to make AI technologies widely available throughout the corporation, especially to those who might not have a computer science background and may not even know how to program. Call it the “democratization of AI.” To accomplish that goal, AT&T is building a user-friendly platform with point-and-click tools that will enable employees — up to one-quarter of the company’s workforce — to build their own AI applications.

AT&T and a host of other companies are trying to address a crucial issue in business: the severe shortage of AI talent. According to some estimates, only about 10,000 programmers in the world have the necessary expertise to develop advanced AI algorithms. But that’s barely a drop in the bucket for what companies will need in their future workforces. Tools like AT&T’s platform will help spread AI technologies well beyond just a limited number of “haves” and reach the “have nots” that may lack the technical knowledge and experience.

This democratization of AI will happen in two ways. First, it will enable employees across a large organization like AT&T to develop their own AI applications to make them better at their jobs. But it will also allow smaller firms to deploy some of the same AI capabilities that have heretofore been limited to large corporations. Think of how spreadsheets like Lotus 1-2-3 and Excel helped democratize data analysis, enabling even mom-and-pop shops to perform invaluable “what-if” analyses.

As you contemplate the introduction of artificial intelligence, articulate what mix of the three approaches works best for you.

• Are you primarily interested in upgrading your existing processes, reducing costs, and improving productivity? If so, then start with assisted intelligence, probably with a small group of services from a cloud-based provider.

• Do you seek to build your business around something new — responsive and self-driven products, or services and experiences that incorporate AI? Then pursue an augmented intelligence approach, probably with more complex AI applications resident on the cloud.

• Are you developing a genuinely new technology? Most companies will be better off primarily using someone else’s AI platforms, but if you can justify building your own, you may become one of the leaders in your market.

The transition among these forms of AI is not clean-cut; they sit on a continuum. In developing their own AI strategy, many companies begin somewhere between assisted and augmented, while expecting to move toward autonomous eventually

Do you know the key digital questions to ask about your business? Cognizant suggests the 100 key digital questions you need to be asking to connect the digital…

What do we need to learn today to work with the robots of tomorrow?

The vast majority of humans throughout history worked because they had to. Many found comfort, value, and meaning in their efforts, but some defined work as a necessity to be avoided if possible. For centuries, elites in societies from Europe to Asia aspired to absolution from gainful employment. Aristotle defined a “man in freedom” as the pinnacle of human existence, an individual freed of any concern for the necessities of life and with nearly complete personal agency. (Tellingly, he did not define wealthy merchants as free to the extent that their minds were pre-occupied with acquisition.)

The promise of AI and automation raises new questions about the role of work in our lives. Most of us will remain focused for decades to come on activities of physical or financial production, but as technology provides services and goods at ever-lower cost, human beings will be compelled to discover new roles — roles that aren’t necessarily tied to how we conceive of work today.

Pop culture and science fiction have ostensibly redefined artificial intelligence – or AI – to describe a futuristic world with robots and space-age innovations. Yes, it’s cool. And yes, it’s all the rage again, but more in the form of smarter systems and prescriptive recommendations, not Hal 9000.
Simply put, AI means making computers and machines capable of human-like, intelligent behavior. For businesses today, the promise of AI is to improve customer engagement by better anticipating customer needs and optimizing work to provide more relevant customer experiences. Recent advances in data processing speeds, big data processing, and machine learning methods – all at lower costs – means the promise of AI can be even more easily extended to most any customer engagement scenario.

But what will AI mean for marketers? Ironic as it might sound, AI technology will actually help marketing become more human. While there is talk of AI replacing marketers’ jobs, in reality it will be an asset that will make marketers more insightful, effective, and smarter about how they engage with customers and deliver meaningful experiences....

Artificial intelligence (see the Wikipedia definition), specifically machine learning, is an increasingly integral part of many industries, including marketing.