Intelligence in the Data Era

Authored by Sameer Dhanrajani, Chief Strategy Officer, Fractal Analytics

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most talked about agenda among large and small companies in the world of date today. The promises artificial intelligence as technology, plans to deliver is un-paralleled. One would be able to solve answers to some problems which have been beyond reach for want of huge computing power. If one keenly observes the Gartner hype cycle 2018, Deep Learning with neural networks is right at its peak. As we all know, it’s the Deep Neural Networks which has been the key driver of the artificial intelligence technologies. Artificial intelligence as a concept is not new. It has been in existence for decades, right from when Arthur Samuel created a learning algorithm to beat the local state checkers champion. At that time it took a whole lot of compute power to run a single algorithm to teach machine how to play. This requirement of huge compute resources was such a high barrier to entry that most companies and research organizations gave it a pass. It was not until 1998 when a thesis paper on Deep learning by Yann Lecun, which emphasized on using neural networks for machine learning, the DNN a new way to architect deep learning re-energized this interest. 

 Fast forward to today – the whole scenario has changed. The cost of compute, and the availability of huge amount of data acts a brilliant catalyst for customers to adopt artificial intelligence. These inefficiencies in economics have gone now, cost of compute has come down significantly so much that artificial intelligence will now lead the digital transformation. The applications of artificial intelligence across verticals is so imposing that, it opens avenues for newer ways to solve data challenges. 

We are now connected as never before, and the amount of data generated or shared reads in exabytes. This can truly be now termed as data era. With the advent of 5G and tens of billions of devices connected in Internet of things, the growth in data in exponential terms will be a norm that we will get used to. This teamed with powerful algorithms of Artificial intelligence, data becomes the most valuable asset we have. It becomes the new oil. 

Many studies have been done on the market and the resounding sentiment is that AI will be the next wave of disruption while studies show that 53% of business have already seen significant disruption from emerging technologies. A study done by service now on a CIO Point of View shows that 90%¹ of CIO’s believe that automation will increase the speed and accuracy of decisions. 53%² of CIO’s believe that machine learning is the primary focus of automation efforts. 

The pervasiveness of artificial intelligence across verticals is so huge that it will propel human creativity, understanding and progress to unimaginable heights. 

The clear roadblock to climb this Everest lies in how we implement these technologies in the real world. How we identify and overcome the challenges and have a clear roadmap of strategies for adoption. Collaboration is one key attribute for rapid success. 

A community like this can help bring ideators and practitioners together to help foster real and rapid advancement of AI in India, providing a great platform to share, collaborate, and learn. 

1. Based on Service Now’s Point of View study titled, The Global CIO Point of View, Jan 2017. https://www.servicenow.com/content/dam/servicenow-assets/public/en-us/doc-type/resource-center/white-paper/wp-cio-global-pov.pdf
2. Based on, IDC Sees the Dawn of the DX Economy and the Rise of the Digital-Native Enterprise, IDC press release, November 2016. http://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS41888916