Remarkable new developments--from self- driving cars to virtual dialog agents that anticipate what we want to eat, watch or buy--have convinced most business leaders that artificial intelligence is a transformational advancement they need to embrace if they don't want their companies left behind. While disruption has always been with us, AI is accelerating the "constructive destruction" process and blindsiding businesses with competition from all quarters. So yes, understanding and embracing AI is a must. Unfortunately, some early entrants in the marketplace have positioned AI as a plug-and-play technology that will magically help companies reduce headcount, minimize risk, know their customers better, automate decision-making, and, if they're lucky, lead to breakthrough innovations that allow them to leapfrog competitors and upend their industry--with little input on their part. Learn more about getting started with artificial intelligence. AI has the potential do these things.

When businesses develop technology with a human-centric approach, they are transforming their relationship with the customer from being a provider to a partner, significantly changing the business dynamics and re-setting customer expectations. The outcome is that AI is poised to enable enterprises to improve the customer's experience in every key interaction with the business, playing a variety of roles throughout the user experience. Advancements in the AI domain are creating new opportunities to make any interface simple and smart, thereby driving a faster pace of adoption and generating better outcomes for enterprises and people. 'Technology for People' shows the way to an exciting future where technology is designed by humans, for humans to create positive change, improve lives, and transform business and society.

As is described in the report on Future Work Skills 2020 (Institute for the Future), working with data becomes very important. For example, skills as cognitive load management and computational thinking are essential to analyze, filter and manipulate data. We need to have computational thinking skills to translate amounts of data into abstract concepts and to make data-based decisions. With the increased amount of data, it becomes important to filter the right information (cognitive load management).

With more than $5 billion in 605 deals of VC investment over last 2 years, artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to have a transformative effect on consumer, enterprise, and government markets around the world. While there are certainly obstacles to overcome, consumers believe that AI has the potential to assist in medical breakthroughs, democratize costly services, elevate poor customer service, and even free up an overburdened workforce. We dug deeper into those perceptions through an online survey of consumers and business decision makers, and an expert salon with thought leaders in the field. This original research unpacks key ways AI may impact our world, delving into its implications for society, service, and management.

Artificial intelligence technologies could reshape economies and societies, but more powerful algorithms do not automatically yield improved business or societal outcomes. Human-centered design thinking can help organizations get the most out of cognitive technologies. Today's artificial intelligence (AI) revolution has been made possible by the big data revolution. The machine learning algorithms researchers have been developing for decades, when cleverly applied to today's web-scale data sets, can yield surprisingly good forms of intelligence. For instance, the United States Postal Service has long used neural network models to automatically read handwritten zip code digits.

All organizations that did not originate this moment have a pre-existing culture as well as legacy technology and processes that can be more or less amenable to DevOps implementation. That organizational culture is influenced by the personalities and management styles of Executive Management, the wider culture in which the organization is situated, and the personalities of key team members at all levels of the organization. This culture and entrenched interests usually throw a wrench in the works because of misaligned incentives. In his session at @DevOpsSummit 20th Cloud Expo, Greg Bledsoe, a managing consultant at Accenture, discussed an algorithmic method that even someone with no positional power who desires to be an agent of change can implement to achieve cultural transformation and smooth the transition to overcome these obstacles and transform the culture until it has the re-aligned silos that are characteristic of a mature DevOps implementation. Speaker Bio Greg Bledsoe is a managing consultant at Accenture in the DevOps architecture practice and regularly advises and leads the implementation of DevOps principles and practices at the Fortune 100.

NEW DELHI: Accenture today said it has developed an artificial intelligence powered solution to help visually impaired people improve the way they experience the world around them and enhance their productivity in the workplace. The solution, called Drishti, was developed as a part of Accenture's focus on Tech4Good, which aims to apply technology to improve the way the world lives and works by solving complex social challenges, a company release said. Accenture, plans to introduce Drishti to more than 100 visually impaired employees in India. The solution is currently being piloted at Accenture in South Africa, and a Spanish language version is being tested with Accenture employees in Argentina. Drishti, which means'vision' in Sanskrit, provides smart phone-based assistance using AI technologies such as image recognition, natural language processing and natural language generation capabilities to describe the environment of a visually impaired person.

Deep learning is a crucial step toward achieving true AI--but the human brain still reigns supreme. This may be the first time in AI's history when a majority of experts agree the technology has practical value. From its conceptual beginnings in the 1950s led by legendary computer scientists such as Marvin Minsky and John McCarthy, AI's future viability has been the subject of fierce debate. As recently as 2000, the most proficient AI system was roughly comparable, in complexity, to the brain of a worm. Then, as high-bandwidth networking, cloud computing, and high-powered graphics-enabled microprocessors emerged, researchers began building multilayered neural networks--still extremely slow and limited compared to the human brain, but useful in practical ways.

To help clients rapidly develop capabilities for addressing some of tomorrow's most complex challenges, Deloitte Consulting today announced its intention to team with SAP America, Inc. to build a new suite of services for enabling digital transformation. Deloitte Consulting and SAP are expected to co-innovate on the development of offerings that will help organizations benefit from the expanded SAP Leonardo portfolio--to automate processes, gain deeper insights for decision-making, and deliver innovation and value throughout the enterprise. SAP Leonardo is a Digital Innovation System that combines machine learning, Internet of Things (IoT) capabilities, blockchain technology, analytics, and big data on SAP Cloud Platform to enable rapid innovation that can scale across the entire organization. Deloitte Consulting and SAP also intend to create new "micro-services" that extend the capabilities of SAP Leonardo, with an initial plan to focus on offerings that address evolving machine learning, analytics, and IoT needs in finance and throughout the supply chain. "As businesses strive to adopt digital business models, they are seeking trusted technology that enables them to operate with more agility, to deliver more effective results and to simplify their operations," said Rob Enslin, member of the Executive Board of SAP SE and President of Cloud Business Group, SAP.

Much has already been made about how artificial intelligence is going to transform our lives, ranging from visions of the future in which robots make humans obsolete to utopias in which technology solves intractable problems and frees up people to pursue their passions. Consultancy firm PwC ran the numbers, and came up with a relatively rosy scenario with regards to the impact AI will have on the global economy. By 2030, global GDP could increase by 14%, or $15.7 trillion, because of AI, the firm said in a report today (pdf). Almost half of these economic gains will accrue to China, where AI is projected to give the economy a 26% boost over the next 13 years--the equivalent of an extra $7 trillion in GDP. North America can expect a 14.5% increase in GDP, worth $3.7 trillion.