Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the most anticipated concept ever introduced in the world of technology. We hear about AI quite frequently these days. Ever thought why humans have fallen for Artificial Intelligence? To find the answer, we need to go back to the golden days where it started from. Artificial Intelligence came into existence in the 1950s and back then it was only limited to academic disciplines. It was never assumed that AI will become an integral part of our day to day life.
Tech giants like Google, Facebook, and Microsoft are also turning their way towards Artificial Intelligence. For example, Google made a breakthrough in machine-generated speech through its acquired AI company Deepmind technologies limited. Google is also using Deepmind's AI to slash down it's giant electricity bill. Microsoft has also made some advancement in deep learning with the release of its Cognitive toolkit.
Artificial Intelligence has undoubtedly changed and accelerated growth of the companies. At the same time, it has also increased the unemployment. Recently, a news published in The Guardian, A Japanese company has replaced its 34 employees with IBM Watson.
Let's have a look at the emerging trends in 2017:-
1. Chat Bots
These are also known as Artificial Conversational Entity. Chatbots are computer programs which are designed in a way to stimulate human behavior as a conversational partner. If something is there which tech giants like Google, Apple, Amazon have in common, this is it. Most of you must have asked Siri or Cortana about today's weather. If you have done that then unknowingly you had a conversation with a chatbot dubbed as a virtual assistant.
In 2016, we saw companies opening their Chatbots API to third party developers in order to develop smart and task-oriented bots. In coming years, be prepared to welcome new chatbots as we enter the age of interaction between humans and technology.
2. Artificial Intelligence in App Development
In early days, applications developed for Android were highly fragmented. Now, the whole ecosystem has become much more integrated. Today integrating voice interfaces into the applications have become an essential part of the mobile ecosystem. This has happened because IoT has grown tremendously over the years. It was reported that nearly four billion connected things were in use in 2014.
Developers have now started adding virtual assistant support to their applications. Some of the famous applications which are using AI - Prisma, Google Allo and more!!
3. AI hardware
To reinvent IT many companies like Intel, Google, Microsoft has taken their way towards Artificial Intelligence. These companies are investing heavily on ML/AI with hardware designs to accelerate next-generation application development. Intel recently introduced Knight Mill, a new line of CPU aimed at Machine Learning applications. The company is looking to make some differences because PC market has seen some downfall in recent years. Google has also done some huge investments in ML/AI market with the introduction of frameworks like TensorFlow. With the introduction of the frameworks they have also come up with the hardware implementation - Tensor Processing Unit - to accelerate specific machine learning functions. IBM is also having its own machine learning toolkit called PowerAI. This new ML toolkit runs on IBM's processor and Nvidia GPUs connected together using a new proprietary hardware.
4. Internet of Things (IoT)
Internet of Things have got a massive coverage in recent years and people are also getting used to it. But without Artificial Intelligence a device doesn't become a smart device. To put it in a simple way, AI + IoT = Smart Device.
Smart devices will also have human interactions. Interacting with humans involves not only recognizing irregular behavior but also facial and verbal expressions. Thus Artificial Intelligence plays an important role in converting a device to smart device. The concept of smart homes is going to be huge in coming years. Who doesn't want his/her appliances connected in a cohesive network and assisting it verbally?
5. AI Startups
Corporate giants like Google, Microsoft, Intel, and Apple are competing with each other in the race of achieving complete dominance in Artificial Intelligence industry. The technology world is already showing signs of the acceptance and success of AI/ML applications in almost every modern technology. Nearly 140 companies working behind artificial intelligence got acquired in 2011. To name a few acquisitions - Google acquired DeepMind, AOL made an acquisition of Convertro, and IBM took over Cogenea.