Trends In Artificial Intelligence
The adoption of Artificial Intelligence in different enterprises has grown due to the pandemic. In 2019, IDC had predicted that spending on AI technologies would increase to $97.9 billion by 2023. Since the COVID-19 pandemic hit the world, the potential value of artificial intelligence has only grown. A survey published by the McKinsey State of AI in November 2020 suggested that at least half of the organizations have adopted AI functions in their organization.
As organizations continue to automate day-to-day operations and to understand COVID-affected datasets, AI becomes increasingly important. Businesses are more digitally connected than ever before since the lockdown and work from home were put into action.
Key Areas Covered
- What is Artificial Intelligence
- Top AI Trends of 2021
- Why Has AI Gained Popularity Recently
- What is the Most Advanced AI
- Ongoing Research In AI
What is Artificial Intelligence (AI) ?
There are many sources which give answers to the question, “What is AI?”. By the 1950’s, there were many scientists, mathematicians and philosophers that were looking into the concept of Artificial Intelligence. One such person was Alan Turing, who to this day is considered by many to be the Father of AI. He formed the idea and mathematical and logical reasoning behind the concept of machine intelligence where machines and computers would be able to replicate the behavior of humans and their intelligence. Fast forward 70 years into the future and we are now in a world where computers are able to converse with humans, albeit with limitations, but this is the progress we see as our world progresses to a more sophisticated AI.
Some definitions of AI are :
I) “The design and development of computer systems that have the knowledge and skills required to perform the tasks which usually require human intelligence to undertake” –AI Lab
II) “The ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings.” –Britannica
III)“In computer science, the term artificial intelligence refers to any human-like intelligence exhibited by a computer, robot, or other machine. In popular usage, artificial intelligence refers to the ability of a computer or machine to mimic the capabilities of the human mind — learning from examples and experience, recognizing objects, understanding and responding to language, making decisions, solving problems — and combining these and other capabilities to perform functions a human might perform, such as greeting a hotel guest or driving a car.” –IBM
Top AI Trends of 2021
The focus of AI adoption is restricted to improving the efficiency of operations or the effectiveness of operations. It can be leveraged to improve the stakeholder experience as well. Let us take a look at the top trends in 2021.
1. Healthcare & Biotech
There is no doubt that 2020 was a major crisis for humanity from the perspective of healthcare. However, just think how much worse it would be without artificial intelligence. Data science was immediately applied to analyze and interpret data about how the virus spreads around the world, and measures were taken. AI hospitals and healthcare systems have automated certain tasks, such as triage and diagnosing patients, or evaluate medical records of their patients in order to best assess high risk individuals or those who may have something that was missed by previous office visits.
Radiologists and other medical professionals have already been using AI to help scan X-rays and MRIs to help find diseases and other problems. AI also helps to solve other on-going healthcare issues such as cancer and other diseases. The laboratories and medical centers around the world have adopted AI to develop neoantigen vaccines, improve cancer diagnostics through blood tests, create regulatory T cells, and engineer exosomal intelligence platforms based on OMIC technologies for treating rare autoimmune illnesses. Coming years should find them leaning on AI more as accuracy rates continue to rise above what humans can see.
2. Greater Cloud and AI Collaboration
AI and the cloud go together in today’s technological ventures like peas and carrots. Digital assistants like Apple Siri, Google Home and Amazon Alexa have penetrated every aspect of our lives, from industries to communities and even our homes. Tasks such as ordering online, listening to music and asking a question can now be done using digital assistants that were created using artificial intelligence methods and cloud resources. For businesses, cloud computing has offered, and continues to offer the ability to scale operations in an effective and efficient manner. Large amounts of data (i.e., gigabytes, petabytes and even higher) can be used in a single database by simply provisioning more memory; new software can be tested and used throughout an organization more efficiently; and so much more.
Cloud services such as IBM Cloud Computing, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure all provide pre-trained and ready to use machine learning, deep learning and other artificial intelligence models, algorithms and services for businesses to use in their data analytics process. This gives even small businesses the ability to access powerful models that have been trained on millions and even billions of rows of data at a fraction of the cost. This way you can start off on a cloud based service until an on-premise based AI workstation, server or cluster makes more financial sense and allows you to keep your data under your full control. 2022 should find even more AI startups using cloud based services to get off the ground quickly so they can instead focus their financial capital on other essential business factors.
3. Cybersecurity
Cybersecurity has been in the spotlight the past few years. With the shift to remote work, protecting the privacy of data on unsecured devices has become one of the most critical issues. There’ve been many public reports of hackers infiltrating large companies and stealing sensitive customer and insider information. These attacks have continued to rise in 2021, including Ransomware that can lock a computer until you pay the hacker.
Using artificial intelligence, algorithms can learn the ways of its user in order to decipher a pattern of behavior and normality. Once suspicious behavior is detected, it could either alert us or prevent the attacker from going further. This can be applied to a company or an individual user at home. People are now starting to adopt smart homes in which they can control daily tasks in their home using a digital assistant. Training AI algorithms to learn their user’s behavior can help prevent hackers from illegally gaining access to a person’s home. Using home devices is convenient, but can also leave a person vulnerable to cyber-attacks, which is where AI can assist in mitigating such risks. We will definitely need to lean on AI to help keep hackers at bay, as they rapidly adapt to new security techniques. By automating cybersecurity, we increase quality and issue resolution speed.
4. Business Transformation
Yes, everybody already uses AI, but so will they in the future. Businesses are hyping over AI because it can help them to make data-driven decisions. We have seen the trend to use AI tools to understand customer decision-making, provide a top-notch user experience, and boost organizational growth will only be growing. Companies that were previously lagging behind in what concerns adopting new digital channels for commerce and customer relationship development have come to understand the necessity of business digitalization.
A new term has emerged called “Martech” which is the combination of marketing and technology to achieve marketing goals and objectives. Today, recommender systems, digital marketing, conversational AI/chatbots are all prevalent on websites that offer a service for consumption. Wearable devices, IoT, sensor technology, Internet and website tracking cookies, and more help companies to collect vast amounts of data from everyday consumers which can then be used to understand consumer behavior better and to create new products and services. As privacy concerns continue to pick up steam, companies will be looking to find new avenues to pursue their marketing goals so they can continue to track consumer behavior.
5. AIOps Becomes More Popular
Many experts say that 2021 will be the year when we will finally use artificial intelligence, in particular AIOps. Over the last few years, the complexity of IT systems has increased. Forrester recently said that vendors would want platform solutions that combine more than one monitoring discipline such as application, infrastructure, and networking. IT operations and other teams can improve their key processes, decision making, and tasks with AIOps solutions and improved analysis of the volumes of data coming its way. Forrester advised the IT leaders to find AIOps providers who will empower the cross-team collaboration through end-to-end digital experiences, data correlation, and integration of the IT operations management toolchain.
Some of the top providers of the AIOps platforms showed that they are actively working in this direction, adopting better and better tools. IBM launched IBM Watson AIOps that offers tools for automating how enterprises self-detect, diagnose, and respond to IT anomalies in real-time. At the end of the year, they also acquired Instana, which is a startup that works on applications for security and monitoring.
6. Ethical AI
Detecting fraud, recommending songs, optimizing logistics, providing translations. Intelligent systems are transforming our lives for the better. In the last few years, artificial intelligence has evolved at a great pace. Yet, this year, there is still debate about what constitutes “AI ethics” and which ethical requirements, technical standards and best practices are needed for its realization. At the tech conference recently held in Vatican City, points were put forward regarding respect for human autonomy and fundamental rights which must be at the heart of AI ethics rules.
The European Union Guidelines prescribe three measures :
1. To make sure that an AI system does not hamper fundamental rights, a fundamental rights impact assessment should be undertaken prior to its development.
2. Human agency should be ensured, meaning users should understand and interact with AI systems to a satisfactory degree.
3. A machine can never be in complete control, therefore, there should always be human oversight. Humans should always have the possibility to ultimately override a decision made by a system. For instance, provide a stop button or a procedure to abort an operation to ensure human control.
Why Has AI Gained Popularity Recently ?
A combination of factors has increased the need for quickly evolving AI. These include our own fast paced lives, digital assistants such as Google Home and Amazon Alexa, remote working opportunities, a larger focus on long term health, and an abundance of data and information being available. Our society is quickly learning how to fit AI into every corner of our daily existence. Many people now have wearable devices, most notably Fitbit and Apple Watches. Both are now used by individuals to measure their health status. An example like this shows that people are either looking or are willing to adopt new forms of technology that will bring more convenience into their lives, and better understand themselves and the world around them.
For companies, the creation of new powerful supercomputers and partnerships with research organizations create synergies that can lead to incredible innovations and inventions. Microsoft announced that they will partner with OpenAI on new initiatives using Microsoft supercomputers to train incredible large AI models with the infrastructure available on their Azure platform. Collaborations like these only make the path to discovering new forms of artificial intelligence more viable.
For individual consumers, having digital assistants such as Siri, Alexa and Google Home, make life more convenient for them. The initial motivation for technological advancement has always been to make life easier and more convenient. As we rely more on AI devices, we become more dependent and more open to new ways of making our lives even easier. The demand is more likely to increase as AI adoption grows and companies can prove to consumers that their AI technology can enrich their lives.
What is the Most Advanced AI ?
Recently we saw two big achievements in the race towards true artificial intelligence. OpenAI introduced GPT-3, and Google’s DeepMind released AlphaFold 2. Both of these organizations are racing to research, create and advance the role of artificial intelligence within our society. There are many others making advancements in AI, but GPT-3 and AlphaFold 2 were two of the most notable.
Human-Computer Interaction is now further along thanks to GPT-3, which can allow us to converse with computers regarding more specialized topics. For AlphaFold 2, 2020 was the year in which the world was engulfed in the COVID-19 pandemic and hundreds of pharmaceutical giants were on a mission to find a vaccine. AlphaFold 2 could very well be what helps scientists get there faster, and to help them understand diseases more quickly on a molecular level which will help to save future lives.
With GPT-3, scientists were able to train an AI model to converse with humans, and to read and write texts. This astounding development was GPT-3 (aka, Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3) developed by OpenAI. For years people have been fascinated with talking to humanoid robots in their native language, and believe this to be a critical milestone to reach with AI. GPT-3 can process texts in many languages better than its predecessor GPT-2.
Ongoing Research In AI
Artificial intelligence is a concept that continues to reach more people, and continues to evolve thanks to researchers, scientists, engineers and entrepreneurs devoted to advancing the field and bringing it to the masses. 2021 so far was another year of experimentation and potential breakthroughs that will build upon the works of previous years, and new innovations may surprise us as new challenges continue to pop up.
OpenAI has given us the biggest leap in Natural Language Processing in 2020. However, this AI model required an enormous amount of compute resources. Microsoft now plans to help OpenAI with a collaboration to use Microsoft Supercomputers to build even more powerful and robust AI models for business and consumers. There will most likely be more emphasis on AI to also help us optimize and reduce power consumption of these data hungry machines.
Google’s DeepMind, AI for Good by Microsoft, Facebook AI, Intel’s University Research & Collaboration Office (URC), NVIDIA AI and OpenAI are just a few of the best known companies and organizations that are driving AI research. They have no qualms about forming collaborations, educating the next generation and finding the best and brightest minds to supplement that work. Partnering with institutes, universities, and companies from across the globe allows AI research to advance rapidly as the best minds help solve problems relating to health, poverty, education, environment, and everything else that touches our lives each day.
Artificial Intelligence and the technology are one side of the life that always interest and surprise us with the new ideas, topics, innovations, products …etc. AI is still not implemented as the films representing it(i.e. intelligent robots), however there are many important tries to reach the level and to compete in market. At the end, this is not the end of AI, there is more to come from it, who knows what the AI can do for us in the future, maybe it will be a whole society of robots.
