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We've seen many buzzwordy innovations in technology over the last decade, from cloud computing to big data to microservices and beyond - but artificial intelligence (AI) by far has the most buzzword baggage. On the one hand, AI is perhaps the most revolutionary set of innovations since the transistor. But on the other, the bad press surrounding it continues to mount, perhaps even faster than the innovations themselves. We didn't suffer this kind of PR nightmare with the cloud, or the web, or even client/server. In fact, AI has an unprecedented set of PR challenges that threaten to sink the entire movement. AI vendors, from the burgeoning gaggle of AI startups all the way to IBM, are all crowded together at the eye of this hurricane. However, this PR storm impacts enterprises as well, as AI promises to change the role technology plays for every industry on this planet. That is, unless the killer robots do us in first.
IGOR MORDATCH IS working to build machines that can carry on a conversation. That’s something so many people are working on. In Silicon Valley, chatbot is now a bona fide buzzword. But Mordatch is different. He’s not a linguist. He doesn’t deal in the AI techniques that typically reach for language. He’s a roboticist who began his career as an animator. He spent time at Pixar and worked on Toy Story 3, in between stints as an academic at places like Stanford and the University of Washington, where he taught robots to move like humans. “Creating movement from scratch is what I was always interested in,” he says. Now, all this expertise is coming together in an unexpected way. As detailed in a research paper published by OpenAI this week, Mordatch and his collaborators created a world where bots are charged with completing certain tasks, like moving themselves to a particular landmark. The world is simple, just a big white square—all of two dimensions—and the bots are colored shapes: a green, red, or blue circle. But the point of this universe is more complex. The world allows the bots to create their own language as a way of collaborating, helping each other complete those tasks. All this happens through what’s called reinforcement learning, the same fundamental technique that underpinned AlphaGo, the machine from Google’s DeepMind AI lab that cracked the ancient game of Go. Basically, the bots navigate their world through extreme trial and error, carefully keeping track of what works and what doesn’t as they reach for a reward, like arriving at a landmark. If a particular action helps them achieve that reward, they know to keep doing it. In this same way, they learn to build their own language. Telling each other where to go helps them all get places more quickly....
There are many approaches to social media marketing, but most rely on one-way communication, with brands and businesses blasting out messages, promoted or otherwise, hoping to reach their target audience. However, chat bots could provide a more interactive and personalized experience. A study from Retale, a provider of location-based mobile advertising, examines how consumers are already reacting to the use of chat bots. Retale polled 500 millennials aged 18 through 34 last December, and the results seem quite positive for chat bots. 58 percent of those polled had interacted with a chat bot on social; among the group who had not interacted with a chat bot, 53 percent were interested. Almost everyone who had encountered a chat bot on social reported having positive or very positive experiences. But there are some challenges that need addressing. “Accuracy in understanding” was the biggest area of recommended improvement. Nearly 30 percent of the respondents who had interacted with chat bots wished conversations were more natural; and 12 percent wished that chat bots could get human customer-service representatives involved when appropriate....
“I was chatting with this robot BradTron yesterday, and it told me the funniest joke…” There’s a turn of phrase you’re probably not used to hearing. The robot part isn’t surprising– Roombas have been keeping our home’s tidy since 2002– but a robot being funny? With advancements in artificial intelligence, chatbots, and other AI taking heed in the business world, this turn of phrase may soon become a staple among online consumers. Last year, I talked about chatbots and their innovate yet slow-moving progress in the “intelligence” department, turning up frustration more often than not when used for customer service and marketing. 2017, however, is a different story: Gartner has predicted chatbots to be one of the biggest players in AI in 2017, along with tons of other artificial intelligence use cases for marketing that are sure to pick up steam throughout the year. Here’s what to expect from AI for business in 2017, and how your small business can get in on the action.
Voice assistants are coming in a big way this year. Last year, 7 million voice-first devices, most notably Amazon Echo and Google Home, hit the market. That was up from only 2 million the year before. This year, 25 million devices will be shipped, bringing the total number of voice-first devices to 33 million in circulation, based on a new study by VoiceLabs....
The 2017 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show, which concluded today in Las Vegas, featured boatloads of new technologies, driverless cars full of new technologies. Many of these advances, particularly Artificial Intelligence, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality, have great appeal to marketers. AI, AR, and VR are poised to be transformative technologies for marketers — if not right this minute. For the most part, aside from some tentative and necessary experimentation, marketers remain focused on what can help them immediately. This cross section of 12 quotes from the CES sessions indicates that marketers, for now, will pay more attention to more familiar acronyms, such as CM (content marketing); DDM (data-driven marketing); and CX (customer experience) than to AI, AR, and VR:...
Virtual reality promises massive changes to the way we experience and interact with technology. Despite that, VR has failed to burst into the mainstream. At least so far…But with cheap cardboard boxes that turn smartphones into virtual reality headsets and intrepid developers pushing for VR standards for web browsers, widespread virtual reality on the web is getting closer and closer. In this post, I’ll dig into some of the implications of virtual reality on both WordPress and in web design in general....
Whether Artificial Intelligence (AI) is something you’ve just come across or it’s something you’ve been monitoring for a while, there’s no denying that it’s starting to influence many industries. And one place that it’s really starting to change things is e-commerce. Below you’ll find some interesting stats and facts about how AI is growing in e-commerce and how it’s changing the way we do things. From personalizing the shopping experience for customers to creating personal buying assistants, AI is something retailers can’t ignore. We’ll also take a look at some examples of how leading online stores have used AI to enrich the customer buying experience....
..."Law enforcement agencies are increasingly interested in trying to detect plans for disruptive events from social media, and also to monitor activity at large gatherings of people to analyze security," the study argues. "There is significant work on crowd simulations to determine how crowds can be controlled. At the same time, legitimate concerns have been raised about the potential for law enforcement agencies to overreach and use such tools to violate people’s privacy."
And when it comes to employment and the workplace, the study sees AI as replacing tasks rather than jobs, while also helping to create new kinds of jobs.
The authors conclude by saying they’ve found no cause for concern that AI poses an imminent threat to humanity. No machines with self-sustaining long-term goals and intent have been developed, they write, nor are they likely to be in the near future....
Chatbots — AI-enabled messaging programs that respond to text-based requests — are the latest innovation that startups and corporations are using to serve existing customers and bring in new ones. Companies across a wide variety of industries are building these tools on popular messaging apps like Facebook Messenger, Slack, Kik, and Hipchat, as well as on their own websites and apps. Some are even available by text, to help users do things like fight parking tickets, respond to customer service inquiries, and order tacos.
This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you see we’re missing a chatbot that’s currently up and running, please share the link with us in the comments section. We’ll add new, significant chatbots to the list over time.
Though not quite as exciting (or terrifying) as artificial intelligence per se, chatbots and virtual assistants are proliferating, especially in retail. Through a partnership with IBM Watson, Macy's recently joined the growing list of retailers that are implementing AI-infused technology to help improve customers' shopping experiences.
That brands are flocking to Watson-esque technology is more sensible than it is remarkable. Retailers have long struggled to meaningfully marry digital with their in-store business, and while many assumed the advent of Big Data would help address some of the divide here, processing and actioning these reams of data has proved a considerable challenge for many. So, enter the robots; machines capable of quickly processing company and customer data and conveying their learnings to customers, often in a natural language conversation.
Obvious benefits aside, the increasing adaptation of Watson and its ilk begs a couple of questions: how are these chatbots and virtual assistants actually fitting into customers' everyday shopping experience, and (crucially) what role will human customer service agents play in a retail world ran by all knowing, talking/texting machi1nes?
Robots, though more specifically virtual robots or chatbots powered by artificial intelligence (AI), are transforming the way brands do business with their customers. Domino’s was one of the first companies to dabble in AI, allowing customers to order pizza by tweeting a pizza emoji to @Dominos. On the backend, a bot scans to confirm the tweet was not a hoax and processes the order.
More recently, Taco Bell unveiled its TacoBot within the Slack messaging platform that allows busy workers to chat with a bot to order a taco. And at Facebook’s F8, 1-800-Flowers, CNN, Spring — a retail shopping startup — and others released chatbots for Facebook Messenger. These bots offer new ways to shop, make purchases, read the news and more within the Facebook platform.
While all this sounds exciting, what does it actually mean for consumers, and what’s to become of the “humans” on social media?...
As we reach the middle of the 21st century, half the population of the world will lose their job to a machine. Yes, this is another 'robots will take our jobs ' story.
The latest comes from Moshe Vardi, professor at Rice University , Houston, who delivered a talk to the American Association for the Advancement of Science , exploring the question: "If machines are capable of doing almost any work humans can do, what will humans do?"
Future belongs to the machines
Vardi reckons that half of workers across the globe will be replaced by machines within the next 30 years, wiping out middle-class jobs and "exacerbating inequality". He noted that robots would take over in many spheres of life, including automated driving and sex robots. As the Guardian reports, he also observed that this future is likely to mean humans have much more leisure time — indeed we may only work a handful of hours per week....
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It’s not enough for marketers to collect petabytes of data; it takes a sharp mind to make sense of it all. Actually it takes a nonhuman one. That’s why artificial intelligence has invaded the marketing world, with Facebook, Google, Salesforce, IBM, Amazon, and others building machine learning into their platforms. Now marketers must understand the lingo if they’re going to survive the machines. To help, here’s a guide to the terminology around A.I....
When Twitter user Rory Cellan-Jones asked Google Home if Barack Obama is planning a coup, the digital assistant device responded by detailing a bogus conspiracy theory about the former president plotting a communist scheme to take over the government.
"According to details exposed in Western Centre for Journalism's exclusive video, not only could Obama be in bed with the communist Chinese, but Obama may in fact be planning a communist coup d'état at the end of his term in 2016," the smart home device's robotic voice explained, though it stumbled over the word "d'etat."
But this outlandish response isn't restricted to Google Home. Rather, it highlights a problem with how the search engine responds to queries in the form of "featured snippets" — short, direct answers highlighted at the top of its search results....
We’re now at one of those times when an influx of new, emerging technologies is poised to change the way audiences consume content. Should brands take a risk and enter uncharted territories, or stay the course with what they do best, and see how things play out?
“Marketers’ best leverage exists when there’s a new audience that’s growing but not a lot of competition trying to reach that audience,” says Kipp Bodnar, Chief Marketing Officer, Hubspot. “When you invest in an emerging technology, you can be in front of a growing audience in a far less competitive landscape.”
That’s why as innovations like virtual assistants, artificial intelligence (AI), 360-degree live video, and others take shape, brand content creators are among the first to experiment.
Here’s a look at how forward-thinking brands are harnessing the latest technologies to deliver content....
As Turing predicted, the concepts behind AI are often hard to grasp, and sometimes even more difficult recognize in our daily lives. By its very nature, AI is designed to flow seamlessly into the tools you already use to make the tasks you do more accurate or efficient. For example, if you’ve enjoyed Netflix movie suggestions or Spotify’s personalized playlists, you’re already encountering AI.
In fact, in our recent HubSpot Research Report on the adoption of artificial intelligence, we found that 63% of respondents are already using AI without realizing it.
When it comes to marketing, AI is positioned to change nearly every part of marketing -- from our personal productivity to our business’s operations -- over the next few years. Imagine having a to-do list automatically prioritized based on your work habits, or your content personalized based on your target customer writes on social media. These examples are just the beginning of how AI will affect the way marketers work....
If you happen to live in one of the six million US homes that have so far purchased an Amazon Echo, you may think Alexa is just a voice emanating from a cylindrical speaker that knows a couple of tricks. It plays the Beatles on command. It can order more toilet paper. It has jokes, some of which are even kind of funny.
In fact, that’s only the start. Just as Apple taught us that a small portable phone could be a more powerful computing method than our lumbering desktops, Amazon is introducing us to a new computing interface — a voice devoid of a screen—that will eventually grow to be more ubiquitous and more useful than our smartphones.
Forget the onerous process of pulling your Pixel or iPhone from your pocket, unlocking it, opening apps, and tapping your desires onto a screen. (Ugh!) Soon, you’ll speak your wants into the air — anywhere — and a woman’s warm voice with a mid-Atlantic accent will talk back to you, ready to fulfill your commands....
Pop culture and science fiction have ostensibly redefined artificial intelligence – or AI – to describe a futuristic world with robots and space-age innovations. Yes, it’s cool. And yes, it’s all the rage again, but more in the form of smarter systems and prescriptive recommendations, not Hal 9000.
Simply put, AI means making computers and machines capable of human-like, intelligent behavior. For businesses today, the promise of AI is to improve customer engagement by better anticipating customer needs and optimizing work to provide more relevant customer experiences. Recent advances in data processing speeds, big data processing, and machine learning methods – all at lower costs – means the promise of AI can be even more easily extended to most any customer engagement scenario. But what will AI mean for marketers? Ironic as it might sound, AI technology will actually help marketing become more human. While there is talk of AI replacing marketers’ jobs, in reality it will be an asset that will make marketers more insightful, effective, and smarter about how they engage with customers and deliver meaningful experiences....
Mark Zuckerberg announced he was building an AI system for his own home called Jarvis back in January. After a year of coding, he’s ready to show it off. You can see Jarvis make Mark some toast, teach his daughter Mandarin, and even shoot him some clothes when he’s ready to get dressed (surprise, it’s a plain gray t-shirt). When Zuckerberg wakes up, Jarvis lets him now about his upcoming calendar events. And when he doesn’t feel like speaking, he can communicate with Jarvis via a Messenger bot as well. Also, Jarvis sounds a lot like Morgan Freeman – and it might actually be him – so that’s pretty awesome. Just watch the video....
The conversation around artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning today seems de rigueur, particularly in light of the recent introduction of “chat bots” by Facebook and other notable tech companies. With each new advancement in the field also comes the obligatory pronouncements of the impending 'robot apocalypse'. Not so much in the Terminator, Skynet-esque sense, but rather the extent to which robots can eventually replace humans in roles where decision-making is more constrained. While there have been some promising developments, machine-based intelligence is still at the stage where it can increase efficiencies to an almost infinite scale, but still struggles to provide adequate context to the intended audience. How then can there be a role for them in creative process? I would argue that AI can be used to drive creativity today, but only in tandem with input from human designers....
The futurists of Silicon Valley may not have seen this one coming: The first commercial delivery made by a self-driving truck was 2,000 cases of Budweiser beer.
On Tuesday, Otto, the Uber-owned self-driving vehicle operation, announced the completion of its first commercial delivery, having delivered its beer load from Fort Collins, Colo., to Colorado Springs, a roughly 120-mile trip on Interstate 25.
In recent years, Uber has predicted a future in which you can ride in a self-driving car that will take you where you want to go, no driver necessary. But the idea that commercial trucking could be done by robot is a relatively new idea — and a potentially controversial one, given the possibility that robots could one day replace human drivers....
While making a robot sounds complicated for most people, creating a chatbot is way, way easier. The term chatbot stands for an Artifical Intelligence (AI) that automatically chats with internet users, and answers the questions they ask.
A chatbot can function in many different ways. Depending on its type, a chatbot can talk to you or provide customer service, tell you what the current weather, and even contest parking tickets (successfully). For businesses, chatbots could respond to a customer’s question and help you do your job.
The question now is where do you get or how do you create a chatbot? Well, these are the chatbot creator apps out there you can try. Most of them don’t require programming knowledge to use....
Pokémon Go is officially a phenomenon which has everyone – both young and old – using their smartphones to engage in good old-fashioned scavenger hunts for colorful creatures who seemingly inhabit the world around us. But this isn’t your grandparents folksy rummage through parks and backyards. Instead, Pokémon Go is but the latest advancement in the augmented reality space, which relies on smartphone amenities like location tracking and cameras to give players a digital escape without being confined to one’s home – like in the case of interacting with next-generation consoles like the Xbox One and PlayStation 4.
While AR is getting all sorts of press for its applications as it relates to gaming, the fashion and retail industries were some of the first using the cutting-edge technology.
Look no further than these five cases.
On June 28, Brian Eno will launch a new video experience for the title track of his latest album The Ship, which was released in April. What's different about this music video is, according to Eno, it isn't really a music video at all, but rather a visual experience informed by and created with artificial intelligence.
"Just as I'm excited about the possibilities of artificial intelligence and new technologies, I'm so incredibly and numbingly bored with videos and the traditional music videos, that I just couldn't imagine wanting to do that," said Eno, on stage at Cannes Lions. "So really, this is an attempt to say, is there some other way we can do this thing?"...
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SAP Developer's Journal asks if bad PR might sink artificial intelligence?