Michael Moore, Ph.D. is an Executive Director in the Advisory Services practice of Ernst & Young LLP. He is the National practice lead for Enterprise Knowledge Graphs AI in EY's Data and Analytics (DnA) Group. Moore helps EY clients deploy large-scale knowledge graphs using cutting-edge technologies, real-time architectures and advanced analytics. Omar Azhar is the Manager of EY Financial Services Organization Advisory – AI Strategy and Advanced Analytics COE at EY. Your email address will not be published.

We are seemingly joined by Bollywood star Shah Rukh Khan (their brand ambassador) during our visit to the BigBasket Offices to interview Subramaniam Mani, their Analytics Head. He believes that the major difference between the software and AI waves is that although India was slow to adopt software service as compared to America, this time around with the AI wave, adoption will be much faster and only slightly behind the leading countries. "This is the second wave. The software wave was 30 years ago. Folks in India realized that they've been able to scale software and I think AI / ML is an extension of software development." While software was often taught through books and in classrooms exclusively, many of the latest artificial intelligence approaches are available to learn online – along with huge suites of open-source tools (from scikit-learn to TensorFlow and beyond). Going in, we knew that one of the key advantages for India would, in fact, be the very IT and ITeS sectors which will make it easy for Indian tech providers to transition into AI services, given that well-developed ecosystems have evolved over the past 25 years in cities like Bangalore and Hyderabad.

Global consulting firm Accenture has acquired Kogentix, a Schaumburg-based data analytics and artificial intelligence company, in an effort to get its clients ahead of the big data curve. The 220-employee company provides services that help organizations make better decisions with their data. The deal, which closed Thursday, will improve Accenture's ability to help its clients build out their data analytics capabilities, said Kingston Smith, managing director of Accenture's Applied Intelligence practice. "If you think about the clients we serve here in the Chicago area, they're not digital native companies," Smith said. "(This) is where they're headed."

Willis Towers Watson, a leading global advisory, broking and solutions company, and Relativity6, Inc., a machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI) insurance-technology company, today announced that Willis Towers Watson has selected the Relativity6 platform to predict and optimise customer retention and win-back. Brent Lehmann, General Manager Affinity & Commercial Australasia said the partnership with such an innovative technology company will help to ensure Willis Towers Watson remains competitive in the marketplace. "Relativity6's product offerings are a good fit to accomplish our strategic objectives across the organisation, so we are very excited to partner with them to take full advantage of the data that we have accumulated within our core systems in Australia." Alan Ringvald, Chief Executive Officer at Relativity 6, commented: "We are honoured to partner with such a distinguished organization. We believe that our solution will enable Willis Towers Watson to better serve their customers and ultimately drive significant top line revenue growth. We've engaged with top-tier insurers in the U.S. and Latin America, and this is a fantastic opportunity to expand our footprint with a truly global insurance broking brand."

Digital disruption threatens to replace around half of the companies in the current S&P 500 over the next ten years. But digital also drives industrial reinvention. And in today's disrupted markets, that is the key to profitable growth. Accenture defines this digital reinvention of industry as Industry X.0--when businesses use advanced digital technologies to transform their core operations, their worker and customer experiences and ultimately their business models. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the power behind digital reinvention.

Bottom line: Machine learning algorithms, applications, and platforms are helping manufacturers find new business models, fine-tune product quality, and optimize manufacturing operations to the shop floor level. Manufacturers care most about finding new ways to grow, excel at product quality while still being able to take on short lead-time production runs from customers. New business models often bring the paradox of new product lines that strain existing ERP, CRM and PLM systems by the need always to improve time-to-customer performance. New products are proliferating in manufacturing today, and delivery windows are tightening. Manufacturers are turning to machine learning to improve the end-to-end performance of their operations and find a performance-based solution to this paradox.

Rapid adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) solutions will increase the UAE's GDP by USD 96 billion by 2030, enabling organizations to better meet and predict customer and citizen trends and drive digital business innovation. As the UAE Strategy for AI guides nationwide transformation, AI and machine learning are entering the mainstream. PwC predicts that AI will contribute USD 96 billion in UAE GDP 2030. By industry, Accenture says finance (USD 37 billion), healthcare (USD 22 billion), and transport and storage (USD 19 billion) will see the biggest growth by 2035. "Artificial intelligence solutions can enable new innovations that can augment the existing workforce, optimizing costs, efficiency, and innovation. Banks can analyze credit and loan repayments, hospitals can predict patient treatment success, and government agencies can enhance mega-events management," said Savitha Bhaskar, COO at Condo Protego, the UAE-based IT infrastructure and information management consultancy and solutions provider.

Of all the technologies that drive digital transformation in the enterprise, people often tout artificial intelligence (AI) as perhaps the most disruptive of all. As automation becomes increasingly sophisticated, there's no question that AI is in the process of disrupting people's day-to-day jobs. As a result, the buzz has largely focused on whether AI will put people out of work vs. whether it will shift work to more productive tasks, as automation takes the grunt work off of everybody's plate. While such discussions are clearly important, they miss the larger transformative story. Digital transformation, after all, takes place at the organizational or even the industry level.

Robotics, machine learning and artificial intelligence are already redefining the industry, with platform companies pioneering the use of these smart technologies. Traditional retailers and manufacturers need to catch up or risk becoming uncompetitive. Dr Thomas Erwin, Global Head of KPMG Lighthouse Center of Excellence for Intelligent Automation and Data & Analytics, says that companies need to learn to work with these technologies – especially AI – and recognize the cultural challenges ahead. These relatively young technologies are changing so fast that companies also need to keep their options open. In 10-15 years' time, AI could be making most of the operational decisions in a business.

Cognitive tools typically yield little direct outcome until paired with human-centered design (HCD). Through HCD, we examine how your people perceive, interpret, and act on information, then use that understanding to engineer insight delivery systems that help close the loop between machine-discovered insights and human actions. It considers the presentation of data and ways it may influence decision making. It even factors in the timing and locations of actions and their cascading effects on talent, customers, products, and more.