Is big data and artificial intelligence a (r)evolution in outsourcing?

In recent years, big data and artificial intelligence (AI) have received overwhelming attention, however the interesting – even obvious – connection between the two hasn't often been explored. It is the combination of big data and AI working together that is now enabling business leaders to deliver new insights, efficiencies and even new functions that haven't been possible before. This is evident in the increasingly useful role big data and AI are playing in a broad spectrum of traditionally outsourced functions such as recruitment, HR, finance and supply chain, through to security and IT. The combination has already had a major impact on how the stock market works, synthesising more and more data to the point at which some people believe it will eventually be able to accurately predict both market trends and human influences on the market. At a more everyday level, Google uses deep learning to recognise objects in images, AI is the technology behind Facebook's Deep Face friend tagging feature and machine learning is the basis for Amazon's recommendation engine.