Feature: Enterprise & Innovation
The part AI has to play in the future of business
Tim Latham is the founder and MD of Datatrainer, a Sheffield Chamber member who is based in the Barclays Eagle Lab Technology Incubator in the city and is working to promote the adoption of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the region’s businesses. Tim works closely with Jaywing AI (also based in the city) as a lead partner to help deliver AI projects using their enterprise grade skills and 20 years of experience. In this article, Tim discusses the benefits of AI with Dr Martin Benson of Jaywing AI.
TIM LATHAM: Let’s start with the basics… what is AI? MARTIN BENSON: Simply, I’d say that AI is about designing computer systems capable of performing tasks that would ordinarily require intelligence to solve. Examples could be getting a robot to walk, a system that plays chess very effectively, or a model that is able to predict demand for a product.
TL: What about Machine Learning and Deep Learning? Are they the same as AI? MB: Not quite, no. Machine Learning is a subset of AI, and the distinction between the two lies in how the system is constructed. Some forms of AI (mostly old-fashioned approaches) are
made by experts handcrafting complex rules and encoding their knowledge manually into the system to perform a task. That type of approach is laborious to produce, and brittle, and so is not really used very much. By contrast, Machine Learning looks for
Knowing which challenges your businesses are facing
that are amenable to being solved by AI can be tricky. Many businesses are excited by the idea of AI, but they
can’t see in practical terms what the applications are for them. I guess that’s where you come in! Finally, another area where some businesses can struggle
with when getting started with AI is the availability of good data, which is crucial to making Machine Learning work effectively.
‘There is far
patterns data, enabling it to learn how to solve problems by itself, based on the data provided. So, with Machine Learning, rather than manually telling the system how to solve the task, you instead provide it with relevant data and the system learns how to solve it for itself. Deep Learning is a recent approach to Machine Learning, which uses neural networks. Neural networks are loosely based on how our brains are structured, capable of learning very complex patterns in data and therefore solving more complex tasks.
TL: What would you say have been the main barriers preventing AI from being adopted more broadly by the region’s businesses? MB: One of the other biggest barriers to AI adoption is the difficulty in sourcing the talent to actually do it. There is far more demand than supply for people able to
build AI systems, and much of the talent has been snapped up by the big tech giants. Another challenge is being able to identify the right opportunities to implement AI. AI isn’t magic – it cannot solve any problem that you throw at it.
more demand
than supply for people able to build AI systems’
TL: What would you say might be the key areas where AI can produce notable benefits in the near future? MB: It’s probably easier to predict what AI technology will not be doing in the future, than to predict what it will be doing. We are miles away from the creation of killer robots, for example. But, there is a great deal of potential for AI systems to make a difference in the healthcare sector. While this must be approached with care, there is the possibility AI could develop new drugs and help diagnose and pre-empt illness. Self-driving cars will also have a significant, beneficial impact on society and the environment and are only possible through the use of AI. Natural Language Processing (NLP) – the part of AI that’s focused on
understanding what written language, which people will have encountered through tools like Alexa and Siri - has advanced significantly in the past
year and in my view, it is on the cusp of being adopted in a far broader sense. I predict that 2020 will be the year in which NLP will go
big, and applications like chatbots will improve and broaden even further.
TL: If you could give one piece of advice to business leaders reading this, what would it be? MB: I’d simply suggest starting to look into AI as a potential tool for solving your businesses problems. It’s changing the world in so many ways and that’s only
going to accelerate. It’s entirely possible that AI can help you find hidden insights and efficiencies in your data to help you meet your goals.
Winter 2020 CHAMBERconnect 67
TOP: Tim Latham BELOW: Dr Martin Benson
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