Council Post: 2020 And The Dawn Of AI Learning At The Edge

With countless predictions about what's in store for artificial intelligence in 2020, I'm eager to see what will come true and what will fall by the wayside. I think that one of the more paradigm-changing predictions will be moving AI's learning ability to the edge. Under the hood of AI's generic name, a variety of approaches are hidden, spanning from huge models that crunch data on a distributed cloud infrastructure to tiny, edge-friendly AI that analyze and mine data on small processors. From my academic research at Boston University to cofounding Neurala, I have always been keenly aware of the difference between these two types of AI--let's call them "heavy" and "light" AI. Heavy AI requires hefty compute substrates to run, while light AI can do what heavy AI is capable of but on smaller compute power.