Artificial Intelligence: The Future is Here
Published on : Monday 30-11--0001
Among the major challenges most industries face today are errors in production, the speed of production (and thereby new launches in the extremely competitive markets), and the human effort required to accomplish the multiple (and a lot of times, repetitive) tasks.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) brings to the table the idea of an error free world. AI is being predicted to be a technology that is going to reduce human efforts and give far more accurate and faster results in multiple fields compared to now.
John McCarthy, the father of Artificial Intelligence (AI), defines AI as “The science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programs”.
AI is a way of making a computer, a computer-controlled robot, or a software think as intelligently as the humans. AI is a science and technology based on disciplines such as Biology, Computer Science, Engineering, Linguistics, Mathematics, and Psychology. AI technologies such as deep learning, machine learning, natural language processing, speech recognition, and voice recognition provide machines with human like intelligence and features such as problem solving, reasoning, and learning.
AI (such as Google’s Search Algorithm) provides users with a more optimised search result based on predictions from their past search activities, while the Facebook’s Homepage Algorithm allows for news to be displayed as per the user’s interests. Other AIs like Apple’s Siri enable users to interact with AIs directly making tasks easier for them. AI can also be used to perform specific tasks such as data collection and categorisation, mass emailing, etc., more efficiently than their human counterparts.
Industrial Uses of AI
There is hardly a field that is not feeling the impact of disruption being caused by AI. The introduction of AI in industries helps processes, and manages the huge databases in an efficient manner. A few industries that enjoy the benefits of AI currently are listed below.
Banking, Financial Services & Insurance (BFSI): The BFSI industry deals with a huge amount of customer’s personal data, and it is critical to ensure security of such personal data. AI-based applications can be used for back office operation, customer service, compliance, marketing, product delivery, and risk management. Automated financial ‘Robo Advisors’ and ‘Smart Wallets’ are examples of such AI apps.
Healthcare: AI in healthcare industry today is contributing big time towards the ‘Fourth Industry Revolution’ by providing physicians with accurate and fast medical information to take better decisions and make effective treatment plans. Deep learning technology helps in analysing the effect of drugs on patient with accuracy and in less time as compared to the time consuming traditional methods. As per market research report published by ‘Markets and Markets’ on ‘Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Market’ the AI market in healthcare is expected to grow from USD 667.1 million in 2016 to USD 7,988.8 million in 2022 at a CAGR of 52.68%.
Manufacturing: Manufacturing industry is taking advantage of emerging AI technologies in the manufacturing process where robots are used to assemble and package products. Additionally, advanced robots are used to perform complex operations such as assembling and testing of electronics, smart homes, smart cities, and vehicles.
Retail: AI is one of the major factors of leading the boom in the retail industry. It not only helps understand the taste and preference of customers, but also helps improve their online experience. AI-based chatbots also help automate the purchase process and offer personalised recommendations to customers.
Transportation: The world is witnessing a major spurt in the field of smart transport and automated cars and AI is acting as the harbinger of change. The Government of Dubai is planning to make 25% of road transportation autonomous by 2030 and this will reduce cost by 44%, increase productivity by 13%, and lower the yearly rate of accidents by almost 12%.
Some Players in the AI Field in India
Netradyne, Bengaluru, India and San Diego, US. The team: Avneesh Agrawal and David Julian.
Driveri by Netradyne is a camera that analyses people’s driving patterns and helps determine the cause of accidents. It uses deep-learning and machine learning systems to analyse traffic lights, stop signs, objects in its course, distance to every other vehicle, relative speeds and direction. The data generated enables the platform to determine whether the driver is over speeding or driving rashly, adhering to traffic rules, is potentially drowsy or drunk, or taking multiple halts along the route. In the event of an accident, it also sends real-time alerts to the fleet operator.
“Using the solution, fleet managers can train drivers on safe driving practices, besides maintaining a close check on valuable cargo.... They can also create a scorecard for drivers and incentivize them on safe driving,” says Agrawal.
Arya.ai, Mumbai. The team: Vinay Kumar Sankarapu and Deekshith Marla
Sankarapu says that Arya.ai is helping build AI that “becomes more intelligent the more it is used. The next generation of AI will be built by AI,” he says. Arya.ai works as an “enabler”.
For example, if a consultancy firm is trying to build AI for a client who is an investment banker, Arya.ai provides the tools, creates the “neural network”, and also creates a cloud system that allows the AI to evolve and learn for reuse.
Mad Street Den, Chennai. The team: The husband-wife duo of Ashwini Asokan (who previously worked for Intel Corp.,) and Anand Chandrasekaran a neuroscientist.
Vue.ai offers product recommendations, visual search technology, and personalised home pages based on the tastes of individual shoppers. The AI-based technology lets customers find best matched products, browse and discover products per personalised tastes, and reducing the amount of time they spend shopping or having a more efficient shopping experience. Vue.ai also helps retailers reduce cataloguing errors and product returns and make merchandising more customer-friendly.
“To build generalisable AI is one of the founding principles of why we started this. The second part of the founding principle is making AI accessible to millions of people across the globe.” says Asokan.
Niki.ai (Techbins Solutions PVT. LTD), Bengaluru. The team: Founded by four Indian IIT- Kharagpur, alumni – Sachin Jaiswal, Keshav Prawasi, Nitin Babel and Shishir Modi.
Niki, one of the early chatbots developed in India, serves as a virtual shopkeeper that assists in the purchase of products and services. Niki is used for over 20 services, including hotel, cab and movie ticket bookings, ordering food and paying bills. It works on a series of sophisticated algorithms that understand human language by breaking it down into structured queries that the machine can understand. Another set of codes then generates a response relevant to the query, and this goes on till the task is accomplished.
The core of the platform rests on language-recognition systems. “We have been collecting the conversational commerce data for Indian customers for the last two years. Close to 50 million interactions have happened on Niki and have been used to improve the accuracy from 50-60% to 90%,” says Babel.
SigTuple, Bengaluru. The team: Rohit Kumar Pandey, Tathagato Rai Dastidar, and Apurv Anand.
In medicine and healthcare, accuracy and time are important factors. SigTuple helps hospitals and healthcare centres improve the speed and accuracy of blood reports through its AI-powered Manthana platform, which can, among other things, analyse blood samples and generate medical reports in less than 10 minutes – and with complete accuracy, according to Pandey.
So where are we headed?
Per the "Artificial Intelligence Market Forecasts" report by Research and Markets, the annual worldwide AI revenue will grow from $643.7 million in 2016 to $38.8 billion by 2025. The report includes market sizing, segmentation, and forecasts for 191 Consumer, Enterprise & Government Use Cases for machine learning, deep learning, natural language processing, computer vision, machine reasoning, and strong AI across 27 industry sectors.
Conclusion
AI is not the future – it already is here.
We are already living in the world of AI and robots. From businesses that use CRMs for managing their clients and their details to airports that rely on AI for security – we are surrounded by AI. However, AI doesn’t come without its share of worries. It comes with the risk of humans being replaced by machines and would take over human jobs. Per a research, almost 85% of customer relationship will be done by AI by 2020.
However, systems based on AI will make all processes even more efficient and increase client satisfaction, thereby improving ROI for organisations.
-Amit Kapoor
Image Captions:
Pic 1: Artificial Intelligence is not the future – it already is here.
Pic 2: Russian company Mosca’s high performance, fully automatic strapping machine with controls customised to meet application requirements.
Pic 3: Bosch CEO Denner says: “Automated driving makes roads safer. Artificial intelligence is the key to that. We’re making the car smart.”
Pic 4: AI Machines, USA, has launched the "Intelli-Agent" an AI powered OS/Platform that provides a truly human way of interacting with Mobile/IoT devices.
References:
https://www.quora.com/Why-do-we-need-AI-at-all-Why-is-its-inception-necessary
https://beebom.com/examples-of-artificial-intelligence/
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/60-minutes-artificial-intelligence-real-life-applications/
https://www.techemergence.com/artificial-intelligence-industry-an-overview-by-segment/
http://www.marketsandmarkets.com/Market-Reports/artificial-intelligence-market-74851580.html