AI is the latest "fashion" in enterprise tech, with widespread usage at least a year away

A day spent at the inaugural AI Summit in London last week highlighted the inherent contradiction when it comes to artificial intelligence and the enterprise: AI has been on the industry's radar for decades, yet businesses aren't ready to deploy the technology just yet. Murray Shanahan, professor of cognitive robotics at Imperial College London said that artificial intelligence (AI) is the latest fashion in an industry that is known for them: "Larry Ellison famously said that there is nothing more fashion led than the IT industry. We can see AI as a new fashion, rebadging a load of old ideas, but essentially technology has always been about adding value to an organisation." David Schatsky, head of the trend-sensing program for the US innovation team at Deloitte is a little more positive, saying: "I have looked at literally hundreds of examples of organisations in every industry that have applied or are piloting cognitive technologies in some way. We've found that you can classify everything into one of these three buckets of applications: product, process and insight."