Artificial Intelligence - the next "Cloud"phenomenon

In the last 5 years, out of many hyped technologies, if anything has cut really hard and has caused the greatest impact for Enterprises, it is Cloud Computing. I remember reading many Thought Leadership articles around the year 2013-14 which was solely focused on Cloud adoption. Typically, these reports presented data that was summary of findings gathered by conducting surveys of CIOs across industries and geographies. The typical questions asked where around few things:

1. Is investment in Cloud computing strategic for your enterprise?
2. What are the perceived advantage for moving workloads to the Cloud?
3. Do you feel security and/or privacy concerns are barriers for adopting Cloud?

In the last couple of years, the maturity and hence adoption of Cloud has significantly increased and it is pretty mainstream now. IT Budgets has been shrinking forever and Cloud has helped Enterprises to cut down upfront Capex at the same time being an efficient delivery model having the potential to bring down operational costs.

Looks like we are now on the transition point of the "S" Curve, where another hyped technology might hold the key to drive things very differently - Artificial Intelligence popularly called AI. What was happening to Cloud in 2013-14 is happening to AI now. Most enterprises are currently trying to understand what is AI and how can it bring value to them. A lot is been discussed as well around "Automation" which is a key lever for efficiency, however AI-led Automation can be a significant game changer in the future.

In very simple terms AI is a substitute for Human Intelligence and AI models are substitute for the Human brain. If we are able to create models which can mimic the Human brain, there will a radical change in the way we approach business problems today. There would be endless possibilities. However, can we trust the models as much as we trust the Human brain, may be for simple things we can today but as the maturity of these models increases over time, we may end up trusting them and use these models in complex business applications.

Definitely, the potential is huge and as technology evolve, the adoption and application will increase...yet When will it happen is anyone's guess! However, those who will embrace the AI-led change, might end up being the market winner in the future with a strategic advantage which will be difficult to counter by the laggards.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's own and do not reflect the view of any company.