AI for BI: Better or Faster Decisions? Transforming Data with Intelligence

AI was big news in 2018, but we overlooked the two distinct aspects of AI -- how it can augment human decision making or automate decision making. Here's why the distinction is important. The past year has seen virtually every BI and analytics vendor claiming enhancement of their tools with various flavors of artificial intelligence (AI). Others are little more than a thin veneer of AI terminology applied to planned or existing features. I have two questions regarding the emergence of AI for BI in 2018: have there been some real breakthroughs and what happens next? I wrote a series of three articles in March 2016 posing the question: "Where is Cognitive Decision Making in BI?" I had already been asking similar questions as early as 2011 but was bold enough to predict that cognitive would replace analytics within another year or two.