Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be the most powerful and transformative technology the business world has ever seen, helping us make smarter decisions, automate tasks and fully realize the value of the data businesses are generating at an ever-growing rate.

1. Future Trends
Of AI And Analytics
In The Cloud

2. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to be the most powerful and
transformative technology the business world has ever seen, helping us make
smarter decisions, automate tasks and fully realize the value of the data
businesses are generating at an ever-growing rate.
Over the last decade, AI technology has shown that it has revolutionary
implications across all industries. Several trends have evolved in parallel to form
a perfect storm. Together, they have brought us to the point where “thinking
machines” – once the domain of science fiction – are a practical reality today,
and are set to have a revolutionary impact on our future.

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Today, we live in digitally connected world, full of Internet of Things devices, in which
collecting and sharing data has become part of almost everything, and we have
increasingly sophisticated analytic technologies and methods to turn the data into
business value. Perhaps most significantly, this includes deep learning neural network
models. Though based on research into machine learning going back to the 1960s, they
have become far more useful since we’ve been able to plug them into the internet and
fuel them with almost unlimited amounts of data. This has rapidly advanced what is
possible with machine learning and provides us with the “brains” of today’s AI
applications.
A third major development on the road to artificial intelligence is undoubtedly the arrival
of cloud computing. Getting to the point where we can perform tasks that we consider to
be “AI” – identifying objects in images, or understanding natural language – requires
crunching a lot of data through a lot of algorithms. This involves massive amounts of
computing power and storage space, and although both of these commodities are
constantly falling in price, the requirements would still be prohibitively expensive for most
businesses.

4. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Cloud is the solution to this problem. PWC analysts forecast that AI technology can
potentially create $15.7 trillion of value within the world economy over the next decade.
But much of that will depend on the ability of businesses to access and analyze the data,
technology and skills that will make it possible.
Not only that, but there could be untold social, economic or political consequences were
technology this transformative only in the hands of the most powerful corporations and
governments. Cloud’s real value is that it acts as a democratizer of AI, letting virtually
anyone create supercomputer-powered apps and services that can be run from the tiny
devices we carry in our pockets. This is one of the biggest trends we see in AI and the
cloud today – companies of all sizes seizing the chance to create AI-powered products
and services that previously only could have been delivered by the biggest and best-
resourced enterprises.

5. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
It means that companies of any size can potentially use leading-edge AI analytics to drive results like
those seen by Netflix, whose users make 80 percent of their decisions on what to view next based on
the company's prediction. Or German online retailer Otto, which uses AI to predict with 90 percent
accuracy what the company will sell over the next 30 days. This generates huge savings (value) for the
company by cutting money spent on the purchase, storage, distribution and retailing of products that
aren't going to sell.
Another trend is clearly the accelerated pace at which all this is happening. Due to the COVID-19
pandemic, in just a few months, many of my customers have achieved levels of digital transformation
they previously would have expected to take three or four years. This has sped up migration to the
cloud, as requirements have arisen for more widely distributed infrastructure. Cloud tools like Office
365 and Slack have been the backbone of the work-from-home revolution that has helped many
companies keep going. Just as we have seen music, films and gaming move to the cloud, so too are
the business services and productivity tools that we use to communicate with customers, collaborate
with colleagues and manage our day-to-day operations.

6. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Meanwhile, the cloud itself is changing. Options now exist to put your
infrastructure fully within a public cloud environment. Increasingly businesses
are looking toward multi-cloud or hybrid-cloud approaches – allowing them to
take more direct control over where their data is stored and how it is guarded.
Hybrid models such as "cloud-on-premises" involve public cloud providers
deploying containerized micro-clouds at client premises that benefit from the
connective and feature-rich environment that the public cloud provides, so the
client never has to let the data out of their sight or direct control.
So what can companies actually do with AI in the cloud? In my opinion, there
are six innovative ways in which it can be deployed by a business to generate
value.

7. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Firstly, there’s making predictions. The more information we have about what’s happened
in the past, the more accurately we can forecast what’s likely to happen next. This enables
businesses to make decisions about deploying resources and reducing waste more
efficiently.
Then there is the move toward real-time analytics. This is about understanding what’s
happening as it unfolds, and allowing businesses to step in and provide precisely the
product or service a customer is looking for, at the point they are ready to make their
buying decision. During the coronavirus pandemic, it’s been used to track the spread of
the virus as well as monitor capacity in intensive care wards. Social media sites also use it
to crack down on the spread of fake news and raise alarms when they determine people
may be victims of cyberbullying or in danger of self-harming.

8. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Next, there is natural language processing. Computer programs that take the unstructured
data contained in human speech and writing and structure it so it can be "understood"
and generated by machines unlock the huge value inside written text, voice recordings,
email archives and social media posts. Philippines-based Global Telecom reduced call
volumes to their call centers and increased customer satisfaction scores by 22 percent
after deploying Facebook Messenger-powered AI chatbots to answer basic queries,
passing them on to human staff when they couldn't be solved by computers.
Machine vision – as mentioned above – does the same thing, but for moving or still
images. This is how self-driving cars "see" where they are going and avoid collisions, and
it's also used for checking manufactured products for defects, checking that the toppings
are evenly spread on pizzas at Domino’s, and detecting faces in a crowd for law
enforcement purposes.

9. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
It also gives us the ability to monetize our data and turn it into a tradeable asset. Visa and
Mastercard generate billions of dollars in revenue every year by selling data back to
retailers, helping them understand trends and analyze markets. Social media sites sell data
on users to advertisers to help them more efficiently match products to potential buyers.
Fitness devices like Fitbit take our health data, aggregate it with millions of others, and sell
it back to us as insights to help us live more healthily. Entrepreneurs are constantly finding
new ways to collect, package and sell data.
Finally, it augments us in our jobs, helping us to do tasks that still require a human touch –
but can certainly be done much quicker or more accurately with digital assistance. Here,
lawyers are using natural language to scan through huge piles of documents relating to
cases they are working on, cutting out much of the drudgery and allowing them to focus
on face-to-face communication with their clients. And doctors use computer vision to
analyze medical images, including MRI scans and X-rays, which have become capable of
spotting early warning signs of serious illness quickly and accurately.

10. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Of course, things aren’t always so simple – plenty of AI initiatives fail, and there are many hurdles along
the road to successfully evolving into an AI-powered, data-driven enterprise.
Recently I spoke to SAS’ Director of Product Marketing, David Tareen, and asked him what the most
pressing challenges are today.
Firstly, he said, there's the problem of AI solutions becoming "siloed" within organizations.
“If I’m a CIO and I’m serving 10 business units in my company, and each unit is deploying its own AI
solutions … you lose control very quickly, and expose yourself to privacy issues, transparency issues,
bias…” he says.
"At some point, CIOs have to pull back and centralize a lot of their AI solutions, but that means they
have to have solutions that are diverse, that can do computer vision, natural language, forecasting,
optimization – because the business needs diverse solutions."

11. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Secondly, problems often arise when companies get enamored with one AI
technology that seemingly solves all of their problems while forgetting about
the wider data and analytics needs of their business.
“We have to start thinking about AI as a set of tools, rather than as one
technology – I often tell customers you can’t build a house with just a hammer,
you have to have a varied set of tools and skills.”
Lastly – and in my experience, this is a big one – there's the issue of culture and
buy-in across organizations that may be set in their ways and leadership teams
that might not immediately see the appeal of delegating their decision making
to machines.

12. © 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
"It's getting a better understanding of what this tech is and being able to be transparent
and communicate across the areas where we're using AI,” Tareen says. “We're being
transparent about where we're going to deploy what technology inside the company, and
what the limitations are … that's key.“
For many companies, these challenges around culture, leadership, and skills are the
biggest factors in determining success or failure – not the technology itself. Qualities that
are essential for leaders today include curiosity about what AI in the cloud can and can't
do, anxiety over what competitors might do if they themselves do nothing, and a
willingness to try new things. Leaders with these qualities are well-positioned to steer their
industries toward the brave new world that lies ahead of us.
Watch my keynote on the ‘Future Trends of AI and Analytics in the Cloud’ as well as other
sessions on the topic here: Travel To Faster, Trusted Decisions In The Cloud

13. Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website
© 2020 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2017 Bernard Marr , Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
© 2020 Bernard Marr, Bernard Marr & Co. All rights reserved
Bernard Marr is an internationally best-selling author, popular keynote speaker, futurist, and a
strategic business & technology advisor to governments and companies. He helps
organisations improve their business performance, use data more intelligently, and
understand the implications of new technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data,
blockchains, and the Internet of Things.
LinkedIn has ranked Bernard as one of the world’s top 5 business influencers. He is a frequent
contributor to the World Economic Forum and writes a regular column for Forbes. Every day
Bernard actively engages his 1.5 million social media followers and shares content that
reaches millions of readers.
Visit The
Website

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