Forrester: Businesses Beginning to Jump on AI Bandwagon, but Barriers Abound

The state of AI today reminds us of the old observation about teenagers and sex: there's more curiosity than knowledge, more talk than action, more failed attempts than actual achievement. Also, it's been around a long time, but each generation has to learn it anew. As Forrester Research observes in its new report "Artificial Intelligence Technologies, Q1 2017," AI dates back to the 1950's and has gone through several rebirths over the decades, notably around "expert systems" in the 1980s (at which time an office wag was heard to say, "artificial intelligence is better than none at all"). Today, another AI rebirth is taking place and it seems the availability of low-cost, increasingly powerful compute infrastructures (processors, data storage, networking) will bring it to fruition this time, putting impressive AI capabilities with the grasp of the enterprise. One of his core points is that AI in the enterprise will not so much replace workers but "amplify human intelligence."