A Brief Overview of Artificial Intelligence
By Kris Hammond, Chief Scientist at Narrative Science
By 2018, digital customer assistants will mimic human conversations with both listening and speaking. (Gartner)
By 2019, 40 percent of digital transformation initiatives and 100 percent of Internet of Things initiatives–will be supported by Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities. (IDC)
By 2020, AI bots will power 85 percent of all customer service interactions. (Gartner)
By 2025, the AI market will surpass $100 billion. (Constellation Research)
The years ahead for AI are looking very promising, with the potential for AI to influence both our personal and professional lives greatly. Given the bold predictions listed above, it’s evident that AI is making great strides and is here to stay.
But, with all the hype around the term, it is easy to be afraid or confused. “Artificial Intelligence” is, in fact, a very broad concept. What exactly does it consist of? What types of technologies are powered by AI?
Let’s take a step back and look at the history of AI and dissect its many facets and capabilities.
Why has AI re-emerged?
AI is not new. In fact, the idea of interacting with machines through artificial intelligence has been around for more than 50 years. However, there are a few reasons why it has recently re-emerged into the spotlight:
- Explosion of data
- Increased computational resources
- Identification of specific problems best handled by a machine
The steep increase in the amount of data housed within enterprises, paired with advanced analytical resources at hand and identified use cases for practical AI applications, has played a part in the re-emergence of AI.
6 key AI capabilities
Artificial Intelligence is comprised of many different capabilities:
- Sensing — Taking in raw data for image processing and speech recognition
- Reasoning — Thinking about how things relate to what is known
- Acting — Generating and controlling actions
- Assessing — How AI systems look at the world
- Inferring — How AI systems draw conclusions
- Predicting — How AI systems make guesses about what happens next
Each AI-powered technology may incorporate one or many of these distinct capabilities, thus differentiating the way each technology folds into our professional and daily lives. Learn more about the capabilities of AI by viewing this infographic.
AI for the enterprise
While we, as consumers, are plainly aware of the common AI applications that touch our personal lives (i.e. Siri, Amazon Alexa, etc), applications for the enterprise may be uncharted territory for some organizations.
Fortunately, at Narrative Science, we’ve partnered with enterprise organizations to enable them to leverage our AI-powered Advanced Natural Language Generation (Advanced NLG) technology, Quill, to gain and act on data-driven insights via automatically written narratives. These Intelligent Narratives turn data into a powerful asset to inform decision-making, improve interactions with customers, and empower employees.
While AI is already making a clear impact in today’s world, the future is bright for AI-powered technologies, and we look forward to paving the way for practical applications of AI in the enterprise.
