Why Artificial Intelligence is here to Stay

Becoming a cloud-centric technology company is a given nowadays for companies that consider themselves future-ready. The question is hence, not whether a company is operating in the cloud, but what level of sophistication they have reached in their cloud endeavors. This is because the cloud is being enriched by incorporating other emerging technologies, especially machine learning. There is no doubt that contemporary cloud networks will be more intelligent than ever. And companies must harness the power of the intelligent cloud to realize value.

Machine intelligence or artificial intelligence (AI) is one emerging technology in the enterprise space. Research-centric organizations are exploring ways and means to monetize it and add incremental value to businesses. The machines’ self-learning capabilities open up new avenues for customer engagement, sales lead generation, operational efficiency and so on. A potent combination is seen in the confluence of machine learning with cloud computing, both deriving from each other to help organizations develop a competitive edge across functions. Some AI applications that help us in day to day corporate operations include the following areas:

 Business Intelligence: Machine learning is a useful input for BI, and bringing machine learning closer to enterprise data warehouse will help data-backed decision-making. These AI-driven insights will add value across functions such as CRM, ERP, SCM, MRP, HR, sales, and finance. Companies are foregoing traditional enterprise platforms and embracing these.

Internet of Things (IoT): The IoT revolution is taking a new turn towards data-driven cloud platforms, where machine learning capabilities help make sense of the massive amounts of data. For example, machine learning will find extensive application in Industrial IoT, wherein predictive maintenance is an important use case. The idea is to use Multiple Machine Learning algorithms in parallel to create the best intelligence capabilities for smart industries. Microsoft Azure IoT Suite and IBM Watson IoT are the two dominant solutions in this field.

Personal Assistants: With advanced machine learning capabilities, voice-based personal assistants are set to become more powerful than ever. These are equipped with the intelligence to learn quickly and effectively from past interactions, tracking usage trends and thereby offering a customized experience to the user. Some of the popular examples of AI-based personal assistants are Amazon Alexa, Apple Siri, Google Assistant, and Microsoft Cortana.

Cognitive computing: This field involves adding sensory capabilities to intelligent systems i.e. the ability to see, listen, talk, and take decisions and so on. The basis for this is a number of hi-tech arenas such as natural language processing, face detection, visual recognition, text to speech, speech to text, video analytics, language translation, sentiment analysis etc. The basis for all these capabilities is machine learning (ML). Developers build cognitive APIs to create these man-to-machine interactions. Current market examples include Amazon AI, IBM Watson, Google Cloud and Microsoft Cognitive API.

Bots-as-a-Service: Move over mobile engagement, businesses are now turning to interactive bots to engage with customers. The conversational experience is delivered by a machine learning-driven API which allows them to learn from previous interactions and respond effectively. What’s more, today’s bots are available across a wide range of platforms such as WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, and Slack. The next best thing is their being available as a service. Market offerings that exist today are API.ai, IBM Watson Botkit and Microsoft Azure bot.