Building AI: A Software Maker's Perspective

Artificial Intelligence is surrounded by marketing hype, making it difficult to assess what's real and useful.

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Overview

Artificial Intelligence is surrounded by marketing hype, making it difficult to assess what's real and useful. In this episode, we talk with a venture capital investor and two software entrepreneurs to learn what's involved with creating products that rely on artificial intelligence and machine learning. Join us as we cut through the hype of AI.

Main Discussion

Michael Krigsman: Welcome to Episode #222 of CxOTalk. I'm Michael Krigsman, and we have a really interesting show. We're going to be talking about artificial intelligence, machine learning, and natural language processing. And, we're going to be taking a development perspective, from the point of view of people who are actually creating products.

What is AI?

Sean Chou: ... when we think about AI, we think about it in three different categories. There's really a strong AI, which is to try to create basically machines that are able to think in a general sense...
The second category is really more "weak AI," or "narrow AI".... And then the third category, which I believe Init.ai and I both fall into, which is: The users of the technology and the research... the technology that enables companies to create conversational apps.

Business Applications

Keith Brisson: ... we provide language understanding technology that helps them automate customer conversations...
In finance, it has been used for fraud detection for ages, where you’re trying to find something that really matters to the business in this massive set of data.

The Future of AI

Sean Chou: ... AI will open the door to new category or problems that previously would have been almost intractable feeling. Just like trains and automobiles in the industrial age, now allow for low-cost nationwide distribution; AI is going to open up a new category of problems...

Advice for Enterprises

Ed Sim: If someone is selling you AI snake oil and that’s your initial pitch, run for the hills! You solve a business problem and think about what problem you have, and AI can help you solve that problem and help you do it much faster.

Keith Brisson: My advice is to try to calm yourself down when you hear the hype. A lot of it is ... it is hype, but there’s real value there. Like, this is a long-term trend that is just getting started, and it is going to transform the way business processes are tackled throughout the enterprise.

Sean Chou: Stick with the basics, you know? Make the business case, look at the value that’s being created. AI ... is an enabler. ...what’s the business value and if AI’s being used to dramatically multiply that value...

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