In the past couple of years we have seen huge developments in artificial intelligence. According to Facebook’s head of AI research, Yann LeCun, “AI is not magic, but we have already seen how it can make seemingly magical advances in scientific research contribute to the everyday marvel of identifying objects in photos, recognising speech, driving a car or translating an online post into dozens of languages.” This year, companies worldwide including major players such as Apple, Facebook and Google, will continue to drive the evolution of AI. According to Ovum, artificial intelligence is the “shiny new thing” in technology and will be “biggest disruptor for big data analytics in 2017.”
Let’s explore 3 trends that we are likely to see in 2017.
1. Collective AI efforts
Through most of technological advancement up to today, it has been each company for itself. With artificial intelligence, however, it is different. Many of the players are working together to build off one another’s advancements and work to unveil the full potential of AI. According to Bloomberg.com, even Apple, which has a history of keeping hush-hush, allowed its AI team to publish research papers on AI. These collective efforts will open many doors for even further advancement of AI and we may see more results sooner than expected.
2. AI in Data Analytics
In today’s data-centric world, data and knowing how to use and manage that data are two crucial aspects of successfully operating a business. Companies are constantly working to find a more effective way to turn data into knowledge and AI can be used to make this process more efficient. This year, we expect to see more reinforcement learning and other machine-learning techniques, such as generative adversarial networks. Reinforcement learning will enable a machine to learn without instruction and strictly by experimentation. Google is currently using this type of learning at its data centers to increase efficiency. Generative adversarial networks, on the other hand, will enable one network to generate data after learning from another, and a second network to depict real data from fake data. The knowledge gained from data analytics will make businesses run much more efficiently and with a higher understanding of their audiences. On the market today, there are already several well-established companies with great AI-based, knowledge management system software solutions like Expert System, for example.
3. China
China is a country to watch when it comes to artificial intelligence. The Chinese government has pledged to invest about $15 billion by 2018 towards the country’s AI industry.
4. Incorporation of emotional intelligence and detection
As of now, artificial intelligence has combined machine intelligence with the help of humans. This year, we can expect to see artificial intelligence evolve and be able to navigate emotional intelligence and detection. This will certainly change the relationship and interactions between machine and human, so it is a trend to keep an eye out for.
5. Language Learning
Development in language learning is a commonly predicted trend for this year. Simply, machines would work even better if they had a better understanding of language. This may not be a goal of artificial intelligence that can be 100% attained this year, but we are sure to see some advancement.
As Yann LeCun once stated, “Our intelligence is what makes us human, and AI is an extension of that quality.” We have just tapped into what is possible. 2017 is sure to be a big year in the artificial intelligence world.
Image by Geralt