Let’s Get Cognitive!…

As someone who has been in the IT industry for more than three decades and witnessed the arrival of many disruptive and exciting innovations in technology, every now and again something comes along that really stands out! In this case for me, it’s Artificial Intelligence (AI) or Cognitive Computing.

Artificial Intelligence is considered to be at the heart of the Fourth Industrial Revolution and will touch us all in some way. It can be seen as a technology that could augment the capabilities and efficiencies of your personnel, allow you to address a business problem that wasn’t possible before, enable your subject matter experts to embrace and use AI without the requirement of being steeped in Data Science or AI – i.e. real democratisation of technology.

So, are we talking Sci-Fi or a massive leap forward in being able to deliver real business outcomes?

You can ask 10 people what they think AI is and get 10 different answers, and each one may be wholly or partially correct!

However, what we are talking about here is using very powerful, (yet accessible), compute resources to train an AI model on structured or unstructured data. We train it to recognise or categorise something, or perhaps identify a previously undetected trend, predict an outcome, identify an action, spot something out of normality, etc.

Once an AI model has been trained – using Machine Learning and Deep Learning – and certified as accurate, it can be embedded at the heart of an IT solution and process real data that solves a real business problem and provides a real outcome.

Where did AI come from & what does AI technology look like?

The principals of AI have actually been around for several decades, however, in recent years huge technological leaps forward and innovative collaborations have made advanced AI solutions an actual reality now.

Collaborations such as the OpenPOWER Foundation, founded by IBM and four other partners, has over 300 members and two of the world’s most powerful supercomputers have been born from it.

There are many kinds of AI technology you will be familiar with, such as driverless cars, digital assistants, image recognition systems, etc. But for most organisations it is likely that one or more of the following would be most relevant:

• Vision-based AI using images or video data
• Visual Inspection using AI trained models
• Analysis of data from IIoT (Industrial Internet of Things) – perhaps for predictive failure
• AI applied to data held within asset management systems
• Using AI to predict likely outcomes from tabular data – maybe from spreadsheets for example or large databases, perhaps for financial data
• Using visual AI to interpret real-time actions and movement
• Digital Assistants (chatbots)
• Enabling AI focussed teams and encouraging efficient collaboration on AI projects

Is AI relevant to my business? And how can CSI help?

Almost certainly yes! Any organisation across a wide spectrum of sectors that has data in varying formats will very likely have an identifiable use case for AI.

CSI can provide the following services to help you explore the possibilities of AI in your organisation:

• AI briefings to introduce the concepts and the technology
• AI Discovery Workshops to identify possible use cases
• Demonstrations of Artificial Intelligence products
• Assistance in running Proof of Concept and Proof of Value projects
• Help in choosing the right AI delivery model – CAPEX, OPEX, on-premise, cloud-based, plus vendor & product selection
• Collaborations with specialist AI partners for Data Science expertise

So, whether you are in Retail, Medical & Life Sciences, Finance, Insurance, Engineering, Science, Transport – or something else perhaps! – please contact us for more information about how we might be able to explore the possibilities and benefits of AI for your organisation.

Click here to get in touch…

By Mike Leigh, Technical Architect