Investing in AI: When natural language processing pays off

For the past 18 months, my teams at Acxiom Research have worked extensively with a specific form of artificial intelligence called natural language processing (NLP). Our most exciting NLP development is called ABBY -- our first artificially intelligent employee. But I'm not just here to talk about ABBY. I'm here to talk about the potential of NLP and how to decide if it's a technology your own company should be exploring. First, the open source technology around NLP is so robust you can easily build "on the shoulders of giants" and create amazingly effective NLP applications right now using just a small, highly-focused team and a platform approach. Second, even with such a large amount of powerful technology at your fingertips, creating a front-end NLP (one that "talks back," which is what most people think of when they think of AI) requires both vision and fortitude. Vision to see the power of the technology and sell it to your internal stakeholders. Fortitude because it will require a significant up-front investment before you see returns from some of the more advanced capabilities you need to develop.