AI Hits the Mainstream

For Robert Welborn, head of data science for the insurer and finance company USAA, 2015 was the year machine learning started to make commercial sense. Access to improved machine-learning tools, cheaper processing technology, and a sharp decline in the cost of storing data were key. When those developments were combined with USAA's abundance of data, a technology studied for decades suddenly seemed practical. Insurance, finance, manufacturing, oil and gas, auto manufacturing, health care: these may not be the industries that first spring to mind when you think of artificial intelligence. But as technology companies like Google and Baidu build labs and pioneer advances in the field, a broader group of industries are beginning to investigate how AI can work for them, too.