AI Beyond 2020: What Makes the Tech Tick?

By Sudipto Ghosh On Dec 14, 2018

We thought of starting a new series on what AI roadmaps could look like in 2020. In AI beyond 2020, we discuss the technology ideas, trends, and insights from leaders, analysts, and tech journalists. In a group discussion with our AI “wordsmiths’, we felt bombarded with questions, including–

What do you think about AI beyond 2020? Will it make you more dollars? Will your job be easier in 2020? What makes the technology a go-to-topic for discussion among decision-makers?

Who could answer those better than practitioners themselves!

In the past six months, we did a very probing series on what makes AI a preferred topic to discuss among the C-suite executives. We asked global marketing leaders and senior executives working in the industry with AI and machine learning technologies.

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Our top trending questions that most executives liked answering were:

What makes understanding AI so hard when it comes to actually deploy them?
Which is harder – choosing AI or working with it?
What is your opinion on “Weaponization of AI”

However, the most popular section of the interviews featured answers from this conversation:

Where do you see AI/Machine learning and other smart technologies heading beyond 2020?

While most executives (nearly 60%) believed and have a valid point of reference that AI and machine learning are ubiquitous to their technology roadmap. Without missing the point on how data plays a critical role in making AI platforms successful, these executives acknowledged the strengths, weakness, opportunities, and challenges in their efforts to successfully deploying AI as a go-to-service.

For example, Jesse Wolfersberger, Chief Data Officer at Maritz Motivation Solutions, believes that ‘democratization’ of AI as a technology would be a key factor. Jesse said, “Currently, the implementation of AI is in the hands of data scientists and data engineers. AI will become easier to use over time, and thus get into more people’s hands. I think it is a similar path to spreadsheets.”

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AI-focused technologies in 2020 would be built around supervised networks. In another powerful interview, Orr Danon, CEO and Co-Founder at Hailo, said, “The need for Artificial Intelligence at the edge is substantial and demand is steadily increasing. The missing piece of the puzzle is the ability to create edge devices that can handle massive amounts of data independently in a data center.”

Joe Dumoulin, CTO & Innovation Officer at Verint Intelligent Self-Service thinks, “In a decade, AI will be the backbone of all digital communications for the enterprise. Customers are coming to expect automated solutions to engagements and service problems, and while human agents will obviously still be involved, AI will be at the frontlines of those interactions.”

For all those fear-mongers who are trying to build the sentiment against AI, discussing how robots and automation could kill jobs – here is a soothing touch. Domenic Venuto, Chief Operating Officer of Amobee has an advice to all professionals.

Don’t Fear Technology.

Domenic added, “Rather (than fearing), be curious, hungry and devour the technology to figure out how to use it in a practical application. Young marketers have the benefit of being on the front lines and can pressure test, apply and provide feedback on how new technology can improve.”

AI beyond 2020 for Domenic is filled with optimism. He added, “Good AI will be prescriptive; guiding users to understand the options, trade-offs and the predicted impact of decisions which can be made.”

“A very different dimension of AI is the emerging tech surrounding speech-enabled communications, which will be critical in personalizing the experience for B2B platforms. On the consumer front, voice-activated platforms will make digital advertising more personalized,” continued Domenic.

With a customer-centric approach, businesses can provide quicker adoption to AI.

Sheldon Fernandez, CEO at DarwinAI, recommends, “It is important for us to articulate that our platform as facilitates collaboration as opposed to outright automation. And that this collaboration allows our customers and tech partners to develop deep learning models in a quick and more powerful manner, reducing their time to market.”

With the stakes so high in the AI industry, let’s see how AI arguments shape in 2019 and 2020. There is a lot to learn and research labs have a lot to offer in making AI more educational for awareness.