Corporate investment in artificial intelligence (AI) is predicted to triple in 2017, becoming a $100 billion market by 2025. Last year alone saw $5 billion in machine learning venture investment. In a recent survey, 30% of respondents predicted that AI will be the biggest disruptor to their industry in the next five years.
How is AI impacting your industry? What opportunities do you see for the application of AI in your company? Unless you’ve been living in a cave for the last five years, you know that IBM has taken a leadership role in the AI space with Watson. So, what exactly is Watson? Before answering that question, let’s first examine IBM’s definition of “cognitive capability”, which is at the heart of artificial intelligence. According to IBM, something has cognitive capability if it:
- Understands domains deeply.
- Reasons toward specific goals.
- Learns continuously from experience.
- Interacts naturally with people and systems.
An example might be GM’s OnStar Go, announced in October 2016 as the auto industry’s first cognitive mobility service that will use machine learning from Watson to understand user preferences and recognize patterns found in your decision data. From that, customers will receive personalized marketing services from numerous partners such as Glympse, iHeartRadio, Mastercard and Parkopedia.
Back to Watson…what exactly is it? IBM has branded many of its products with the Watson name, such as Watson Analytics for Social Media, Watson Marketing Insights and Watson for Drug Discovery. These are solutions that solve specific business problems, while incorporating cognitive capabilities to enhance the user experience and accomplish things on a scale that only a machine can. At their core, however, is Watson itself. Watson is a set of APIs that can be called from any application or service that perform specific cognitive functions. Examples include Visual Recognition, Speech to Text, Tone Analyzer and Natural Language Classifier. You build or enhance your applications by adding whatever relevant Watson API functionality you need. Watson APIs are easy to access, test and use from IBM’s Bluemix cloud platform. IBM has made relatively simple to add artificial intelligence capabilities to just about any type of software or application service.
At Revelwood we’ve been working with Watson on applications that combine Watson’s cognitive capabilities with data-driven insights and predictive models. The resulting solutions are capable of understanding call center phone conversations and predicting future customer actions, or in some cases Watson is able to handle customer transactions directly, bypassing the human channels. Our goal is to leverage these IBM Watson capabilities in creative ways to help bring you new opportunities.
Don’t get left behind the AI revolution. Contact us to learn more about how artificial intelligence can help your business keep up with today’s technology disruption and outpace your peers.