Paid Program: Oracle Highlights AI Tools

As Oracle continues to convert businesses to its cloud applications, it's emphasizing features it calls "practical AI" that draw on remote processing power to speed tasks in recruiting, sales and finance. Oracle showed application features powered by artificial intelligence--including resume-sifting algorithms, automated recommended actions for sales staff, and the ability to negotiate payment discounts with suppliers based on their financial health--during a presentation at the AI Summit in London this month. AI-enabled applications the company will roll out this summer provide "aid in the moment when you need it," said Jack Berkowitz, Oracle vice president for products and data science, during a speech at the conference. Applications featuring adaptive intelligence could entice businesses to move their HR, finance and supply chain management apps from their own data centers to the cloud computing model, under which apps, data and processing power are delivered as online services. Oracle already has delivered business-to-consumer AI capabilities, including online shopping recommendations and personalized ads, as well as AI applications for manufacturing that let customers analyze machines in connected factories.