AI Bubble growing, but hype does not stop investors...why not?

3 perspectives: Investors, techies & business communities (+ how AI is used)

Key words: Artificial intelligence (AI), use cases, digital disruption, martech, fintech

Disclaimer: Note at the very bottom of this text

What is driving AI (Artificial intelligence) right now? Why was it not before?

3rd May 2017, Financial times Adam Jezard (link), provided perspective by referring to old movie from 1960. It was a version of The Time Machine, based on H G Wells’ Victorian-era book. Briefly a dystopia of the future society there where two classes were alienated from each other. Certain were enjoying life, whereas others did all the real work with machines to keep first ones happy.

Interestingly, part of this is seen modified today’s world. As an example in my native Finland there there was a storm in a water glass scandal, when local community called “Digitalist network” got criticism that most of it’s so called “digitalists” cannot write code. Some felt offended, explain that Digitalization needs many soft skills and expertise areas, not just pure programming. Nevertheless, same debate appears to rise within global Growth hacking community too. How can someone be considered a hacker if that person has never hacked into any network?

Is it possible to see behind these accusations or open them up bit more? What is this all about? Smells like fear. Fear of missing out (Fomo), which is also considered as one of the major psychological triggers to change. Some research claims that Fomo is a new phenomenon most impacting generation Y and so called Millennials (See a study link) Yet, anxiety of not being on top of things can be observed widely among investor, techie & business people around.

FOMO can cause frustration for hard core programmers and techies, since they might be so focused on delivery that they do not see the next change coming. There is always a risk that fluffy business people come again with brand new –ism, hype or other new ideas to mess up everything that just getting implemented.

Digitalization (and AI) related FOMO is clearly present at the another side of the table, business people, especially marketers publicly admitting that they are concerned about lack of technical expertise what digitalization requires. Tendesdagen event 2016, in Sweden, organized by Swedish CMO association www.mis.se was a good evidence of this. Panelists were discussing how can they cope with SEO and other new technical skills needed. Conclusion was that “strategic leadership” will always be in demand and coding can be left to experts. You could feel the “relief” in the audience. Or?

Winner and losers. AI hype impacts investors, tech workers & companies offerings

Third aspect to this is the Investment community. Indeed as Pitchbook illustrated already in august 2016, year on year growth has been massive. Not just startup funding, but tech giants coming in & buying those. M&A activity accelerates. AI market is the place to be. Now, consider Fear-of-missing-out concept in that light. Based on amount of the online press & startup media, it is obvious that investors want "in" and fast.

AI, especially in the Fintech sector has been booming over 5 years. Roboadvisors have started to challenge existing banks, for instance.  Focus to AI investment sadly can be seen disturbing other areas in completely different industries too. Recently, during #100vauhdittajaa network event, organized by Momentous in Finland, National R&D center VTT president & CEO Antti Vasara was frustrated about this impact. He said that in certain circles, AI is only that matters and if those key words are not part if the project, it will not get funding or chances to move forward at all.

Above tiny example from Finland were to illustrate that what happens in Silicon Valley and bigger global arenas, has impact on smaller ones as well. During these connected times, both human brain & monetary capital digitally move across countries, without any limiting boundaries. 

Many can argue that machine learning is not same as AI, but they belong to same frame of discourse. In order to simplify, in this text context here, AI is seen as being part of/ or including parts of Augmented reality (AR),Virtual Reality (VR),Deep learning, Natural language processing, Big data, Internet of Things (IOT) or industrial internet, machine to machine (M2M), predictive analytics, real-time decision making and so on.

First came the idea, then the money. And when too much money gets in, you can guess the consequences? It has a massive impact on tech community world wide. Back to the discussion above between “techies vs. business people”. When too many people get interested, there is a true risk of thin ice, big mistakes and urgent need for those who see through the smoke. You heard the old tale Emperor’s new clothes? Yet, it is easier to criticize than actually to constructively build something new. Studying is worth the effort and maybe AI can sort out serious students from the rest?

Again in the same 3rd May 2017 Financial times, Maija Palmer (link) had a very good analysis of educational sector and recent trends how people are getting into AI and why. In her text “If you can’t beat robots then why not teach them?“ she revealed the naked truth that many speak about AI, but extremely very few truly get it. Traditional and online university enrollment to machine learning and AI courses increases year in year. Just check for example how many AI related questions are in Quora.com.

Beauty of all failed projects and endeavors is that it forces individuals and companies to prove that they are right, through reality based business cases. Never buy anything as “promiseware” on powerpoint. Nevertheless, messy mix of mismatched expectations and arguments to left and right is fruitful, since all disappointments and successes boost learning curve of all AI stakeholders.

That may explain why Enterprise scale Business community has rightly got serious and embraced Customer perspective with their Artificial intelligence initatives. If it doesn’t significantly facilitate the end users work or benefit consumers’ life with true perceived value, what is the point if doing it at all? Big IT players such as Oracle, IBM, Amazon,Google,Intel & Salesforce have all embraced this, but there are also 100+ AI startups and some of them are very much into customer insight & commerce experience enhancement. Keep reading, below comes some examples.

Tools are tools. Data without creativity. Will AI be able to imagine too?

You can imagine. Use that skill. And while doing so, observe what is already going around you. It is not a dream, most AI development is already happening today. Google has been involved with it all it's existence. Your social activity is traced, weather conditions are taken into account, you are digitally compared to lookalike audiences without any human involvement in automated calculations of these artificial algorithms. And not just your own activities, also those of your devices, and how they interact or link to others.

Internet of Things (IoT) data is a true game changer, where smart houses were just the first step many years back. It is not only about real estate or global personal health related “measure yourself with devices” movement. We are always on, not only our mobile, but also gradually old infrastructure surroundings are becoming “always on” available to transmit,absorb and react to data.

Is that scary? Artificial intelligence taking over everywhere? Think of consumer context. Everybody dislikes spam, and already a 2 year old can learn to skip advertising. Is targeted product content not the dream of both marketers and consumers alike? What can be wrong with communication that would include a perfect matchmaking capability? Idealistically B2B and B2C are not moving towards superficial Tinder thinking, but into something much sophisticated. And that is where deep learning artificial intelligence is in place. 

Biggest paradigm shift is not technological, it is cultural. How we feel and think about technological change. Some people are voluntarily putting chips under their skin. And some companies have access to billions of global consumer and business IDs. It is pure data. No intelligence yet. But when you combine it with more than 7.5 trillion data points collected monthly, it becomes worth millions. You can have access to that too. Have a look what Oracle data cloud has to offer, to just mention one example, link is here. You have heard it too. "Data is the new Oil" as famous Tech investor Ann Winblad said!

Yes, but how,when,where and what?

Is it a dream or a nightmare to receive most relevant messaging in shopper’s immediate context? If you like so much the brands ways of communicating with you, you repeat visits to those online or offline stores. Is that not desired smoothness par excellence? AI enables personalized content & engagements to enlighten and help consumers, system users and businesses. Embedded machine learning allows system to capture target audiences emotions, heart and mind to get attention in countless ways, mobilize and activate them so that it leads to conversion later in their buying cycle.

The time has come when the Algorithm will know better than we do ourselves what we should do next. And many like it: Predictive recommendations drive satisfaction and leads into improved customer advocacy. As a consequence, behind the scenes, AI provides companies the opportunity analysis that they may fine-tune, empowered with next-best-action capabilities to accelerate business performance.

Summary: AI will transform us, this is how you can ride the wave!

Which links back into the very beginning of this blog post. Why Financial times writer Adam Jezard had the point and we can just hold our breath. The new world is already here. Nobody can stop it. Instead of getting yourself an Angst out of it, we all should try to see how to benefit of it.

This is a fantastic possibility for all techies to enhance their skills sets and become core leaders of 21st century true industrial revolution. Endless opportunities to finetune and shape it, since AI is not one. Currently artificial intelligence is presented in form of various different applications, platforms and ideologies merging and overlapping. For creative and business people, this is a sweat spot. A golden opportunity to get AI into daily operations. It has no sense without customer/end user value. Development goes in waves. Up and down. The train is moving; get Your Company on-board too!

Real life regards

Kari

 P.s Lets make it clear. I am personally against the hype and prefer pragmatic use cases. If all above was too abstract and fluffy to you, please take direct contact and let us see how we could build a real life example together. Happy to assist in the process. After all, there is only one way. And it is forward.

 P.p.s Disclaimer: Text above is not, and will not be, a representation of any copyright, trademark, legal unit, person, firm, nor corporation. These are my own personal reflections, based on open publicly available data. No direct or indirect endorsement for anyone or anything with any purpose. Your possible interpretations of the text and Your conclusions of it are entirely your own responsibility. Please note: Financial times could have been any other news source too, it is not a paid ad in this context.

 P.p.p.s Sources behind this post were:

  Jezard ,Adam 3rd May 2017, Financial times (link: https://www.ft.com/content/9a6af8ca-2691-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16

  If you can’t beat robots then why not teach them? Palmer, Maija @Fianncial Times 3rd may 2017 Link: (https://www.ft.com/content/67f560ae-2689-11e7-8691-d5f7e0cd0a16)

Psychological FOMO phenomena, “Fear of Missing out” research: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/03/160330135623.htm

Oracle Data Cloud & Adaptive intelligence apps: https://www.oracle.com/corporate/pressrelease/oracle-introduces-a-smarter-approach-to-customer-experience-management-042617.html

 Vc Money, M&A, big tech giants all are into AI market: https://pitchbook.com/news/articles/tech-giants-paying-big-money-for-ai-talent

Data is the new Oil: https://www.forbes.com/sites/perryrotella/2012/04/02/is-data-the-new-oil/#108d3ec87db3

P.p.p.p.s Answer to the Title question: yes, it is hyped and yes, it is the emerging reality. Nobody can avoid it, so better get into it and shape it!