A New Point-and-Click Revolution Brings AI To The Masses

Even with universities now offering master's degree programs in data science (as opposed to only PhDs), that still won't produce enough pros. "You need teams of data scientists who can actually understand neural networks and tweak them," says Matthew Zeiler, who founded the visual recognition startup Clarifai in 2013 after earning his PhD in computer science. Machine learning, which digests huge amounts of data to identify patterns, is the hottest branch of AI today, with applications as diverse as organizing cell-phone photos, teaching computers to drive autonomous cars, and studying cancer. As Gilbert explains, "No matter how many [people] we train--and other companies are doing the same thing--it's just not enough to make machine-learning AI mainstream." Which is why the industry is moving toward a point-and-click AI revolution.