What Can a Million Monkeys Teach Us about Digital Networks?
In 1913, the French mathematician Émile Borel published his famous infinite monkey theorem in which he pondered the probability that a million monkeys typing at random would eventually produce “an exact copy of books of all kinds and languages kept in the richest libraries in the world.”
Despite majoring in mathematics, I remain skeptical as to whether Borel’s hypothetical simians, even after 106 years diligently at their task, are any closer to typing out even a single intelligible volume.
But what if we replaced macaques with machines and introduced artificial intelligence? Could we speed up the process? Perhaps it would help if we suggested patterns to emulate. After all, sophisticated neural networks have already written novels in the style of George R. R. Martin, composed music reminiscent of the Beatles, and painted starry skies akin to Van Gogh.
But you needn’t aspire to such literary, musical or artistic heights to benefit from artificial intelligence. You might simply want to run your business better. Through predictive analytics and cloud-based digital networks, business leaders are extending competitive advantage in ingenious ways. With newfound visibility into the interconnected operations of buyers and suppliers, they’re uncovering insights hidden away in the vast repositories of data they hold. Marshaling these discoveries, they’re mitigating operational risk, prioritizing intelligent spend management, and anticipating the needs of customers, suppliers and other stakeholders.
Meanwhile, artificial intelligence is aiding businesses in creating value beyond that measured transactionally. It also is reshaping the customer experience and highlighting opportunities to improve it at every juncture of contact. Many businesses, while savvy in their digital capabilities, nevertheless lag behind in the ease of use of their otherwise versatile applications. By tracking the human response to cloud-based applications and integrating what it learns, artificial intelligence can refine the user experience in real time — such that each successive log-in narrows the gap between expectation and satisfaction.
At a time when organizations suffer not from too much information but from too few relevant insights, business leaders yearn for a path forward. Yet contrary to popular misconception, that path needn’t necessarily lead to machines replacing employees. When applied wisely, artificial intelligence complements a workforce by freeing people from the tedious, tactical tasks traditionally associated with procurement, external workforce management, and other cost centers — enabling them to focus instead on more strategic activities such as shoring up the supply chain, collaborating with buyers and suppliers, managing service providers, and instilling a culture of innovation throughout the organization.
For business leaders seeking actionable insights from the data they accumulate, cognitive technologies can bear fruit. Without artificial intelligence, data can still be put to work for an organization — but with about as much efficiency as a roomful of indefatigable touch-typing primates. And that would be bananas.
Curious about how SAP Ariba can help your business take advantage of a vibrant commerce environment while improving your approach to spend analytics, sourcing, supplier management, contract management, procurement, invoicing and payments? Then I hope you’ll join me for the business commerce event of the year, at SAP Ariba Live in Austin, Texas, from April 1–3, where we’ll explore what’s ahead for our platform and our industry. See you there…
