Bernard Marr - Artificial Intelligence in Practice: How 50 Successful Companies Used AI and Machine Learning to Solve Problems

BERNARD MARR
with MATT WARD

This edition first published 2019
2019 Bernard Marr

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ISBN 978-1-119-54821-8 ISBN 978-1-119-54896-6 (ePDF)
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One thing is very clear, artificial intelligence (AI) is going to change our world forever. And the change is likely to be more profound than most people realize today. No matter what job you are in, no matter what business or industry you work in, AI is going to augment, if not completely transform, it.

AI is giving machines the power to see, hear, taste, smell, touch, talk, walk, fly and learn. This in turn means businesses can develop completely new ways to interact with their customers, offer them much more intelligent products and service experiences, automate processes and boost business success.

Having said that, we also know there is a massive amount of hype and confusion about AI. Some see it as the ultimate threat to our civilization, while others believe AI is the savior that's going to solve humanity's biggest challenges, from tackling climate change to curing cancer. The aim of this book is to cut through the hype and scare-mongering, and provide a cutting-edge picture of how AI is actually being used by businesses today.

By sharing some of the latest and most innovative real world use cases from across many industries, we hope to demystify AI while at the same time inspiring you to see the immense opportunities AI is offering. We have written this book for anyone who would like to better understand AI and have therefore tried hard to keep the technical details to a level anyone can understand. At the same time, we have attempted to include just enough techie stuff to make it informative for people who already work in the field of AI.

In this book, you will of course gain insights into how some of the AI giants such as Google, Facebook, Alibaba, Baidu, Microsoft, Amazon and Tencent use it, but you will also learn how many traditional incumbent companies across most industries as well as innovative start-ups use AI. Our hope is that this will provide a realistic picture of the current state of the art: where the AI trailblazers are rolling full steam ahead, leaving many traditional businesses behind in the starting blocks; where traditional businesses are working hard at reinventing themselves and using AI to stay competitive; and where start-ups are using AI to challenge both the AI trailblazers and traditional businesses.

AI is the most powerful technology available to mankind today and the biggest mistake anyone can make is to ignore it. Leaders of nations and businesses alike are seeing both the magnitude of opportunities AI brings and the risks of being left behind in the AI goldrush.

In the United States, the White House has released numerous policy documents that emphasize the strategic significance of AI. In 2016, under President Barack Obama, the White House issued the first report Preparing for the Future of Artificial Intelligence,

Russia's President Putin said: Artificial intelligence is the future, not only for Russia, but for all humankind. [] Whoever becomes the leader in this sphere will become the ruler of the world.

Business leaders agree. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos believes we have entered the golden age of AI that allows us to solve problems that once were the realm of sci-fi.

AI is nothing new and nothing magical. The first developments in AI date back to the 1950s. AI refers to the ability of computer systems or machines to display intelligent behavior that allows them to act and learn autonomously. In its most basic form, AI takes data, applies some calculation rules (or algorithms) to the data and then makes decisions or predicts outcomes.

For example, the data could be images of handwritten words, letters or numbers. The algorithm would be a computer program written by a human that contains rules such as the common shapes of each letter and spacing between words. This then allows a computer to analyze scanned images of handwritten text, apply the rules and make predictions about which letters, numbers and words it contains, enabling machines to recognize handwriting. This type of AI has been used, for example, by the US Postal Services to automatically read addresses on letters from as early as 1997. For narrow applications this kind of AI worked well.

This rule-based AI runs into difficulties when tasks are more complex or when we humans can't easily explain the rules and therefore can't program them into algorithms. Speaking our language, walking around and recognizing a friend in a crowd are all examples of skills that we have acquired through experience but for which we can't easily explain the rules.