Artificial Intelligence, Buzzwords And Competitive Value

There is growing concern in some quarters of the media about the misuse of the term artificial intelligence as a mere buzzword, as little more than the newest way to market a company's products or image, an issue I discussed in an interview in leading Spanish daily El País after participating in an OECD forum on the topic in Paris last June. Make no mistake: artificial intelligence in general and machine learning in particular will be one of the major drivers in technology in the coming years: the ability of an unsupervised algorithm to learn from data will allow us to do things beyond our current understanding when it comes to tackling stable, highly predictable problems and where it is reasonably easy to collect large amounts of data. At the same time, let's be clear: we're not talking here about machines capable of thinking as such, rather the ability to create products that make a competitive difference for companies with the right managers. Who are the right managers? Definitely, not the kind that believe that artificial intelligence can simply be bought and installed, or worse, those who see it as a marketing buzzword.