There is a clear trend in Artificial Intelligence whereby major companies like IBM, Microsoft, and Google are creating the plumbing with layers of abstraction on top such that mere mortals can leverage capabilities such as Machine Learning to build complex systems. This interview offers an excellent overview of the state of the union on this topic. Josh Sutton: I lead Artificial Intelligence at Publicis.Sapient, which is focused on digital business transformation. We have a number of brands that operate as part of Publicis.Sapient. Collectively, we represent a little over a quarter of the Publicis group, which is one of the largest advertising companies in the world.

Sramana Mitra: There's a clear trend of these more complex plumbing of the AI systems becoming available as platforms and then abstraction layers being created such that AI can become a lot more ubiquitous. Where would you start a new company today if you wanted to do something in AI? Josh Sutton: Where I would look at and where I get excited about the investment opportunities is not in a technology play directly, but in a business transformation play. If you think about it simply, the suite of AI tools right now enables you to make better decisions faster, engage with customers conversationally without having the human capital cost associated with that model, and the ability to perform certain tasks and functions that require limited human interactions. Andrew Ng came out with a simplified but still great litmus test of if you can do it, then it's probably a good use case. We take those three things as levers of change and then look at industry problems today and how they're being solved.

Josh Sutton has been helping clients leverage advanced technologies to drive business transformation for the past twenty years. Most recently he has assumed leadership of Publicis.Sapient's Artificial Intelligence Practice, helping companies leverage established and emerging artificial intelligence platforms to generate business insights, drive customer engagement, and accelerate business processes. With more than 22,000 people around the world, Publicis.Sapient, part of Publicis Groupe, is the world's most advanced and largest digitally-centered platform focused exclusively on digital transformation and the dynamics of an always-on world. Some representative AI programs that Josh and Publicis.Sapient have been involved with include the following: Leveraging a semantic AI platform to generate unique customer insights for a global wealth management firm Creating next generation virtual assistants for a wide range of companies including leading theme parks, automotive firms, and retail banks Using machine learning tools to optimize media planning and buying activities for large CPG and airline companies Using a combination of AI technologies to build "smart search" tools for global energy and financial services firms Using a combination of AI technologies to build "smart search" tools for global energy and financial services firms Josh Sutton: From a personal point of view, that would really go back to my early childhood. I think artificial intelligence has always been one of the things that I've been passionate about.

The hype around artificial intelligence (AI) is ramping up, especially as big tech companies like Amazon, Google, Facebook, IBM and Microsoft attempt to commercialize its use. Agencies are also starting to figure out how they can leverage AI to make their clients' marketing and advertising efforts more effective. Josh Sutton: We've been looking at AI for the better part of four years now with the real focus of getting an understanding as to what it really is that people mean when they say "AI." Within the practice, we primarily do two things. One is that we help companies look across the landscape of all the different big data, machine learning and other artificial intelligence platforms that are available to understand which ones can help them best achieve their business objectives.