Artificial Intelligence (AI) is having a broad and deep impact on the way services are exported globally. Be it for good or bad, there is no getting away from the reality that AI is an agent of disruption. One of the perennial front-runners of Nearshore outsourcing, Costa Rica, appears to be adapting to the AI opportunity faster than most countries in the region. Local companies are intensifying their AI development operations and a number of AI technologies are gaining traction there – all of which will influence Costa Rica's positioning in the next-generation of services delivery. The Latin American nation of nearly five million has long been seen as a tech epicenter of Central America ever since Intel chose it to open the biggest microchip factory in the region in 1997, with an initial investment of US$800 million.

Accenture has purchased a minority stake in artificial intelligence-based data analytics platform vendor Splice Machine as part of a broader strategy aimed at bolstering its new data analytics services. Splice Machine is open source and is built upon the popular Apache Hadoop, HBase, and Spark distributed platforms. Moreover, its solutions can be deployed on-premise or as a fully managed cloud service. Accenture already has a relationship with the San Francisco-based company. Last year, Accenture integrated Splice Machine's intelligent application platform into its analytics-as-a-service solution.

IBM has teamed up with a Montreal-based Institute for Data Valorization (IVADO) to jointly develop artificial intelligence (AI) products, with plans to add another 100 technology professionals to its innovation center. The innovation center, launched in 2016 for providing digital transformation services, will henceforth focus on AI and Salesforce expertise, the American technology giant stated in a press release. "Research in AI is quickly expanding worldwide – and particularly in Montréal – but AI is far from having reached its full potential in delivering concrete results for businesses," said Claude Guay, General Manager, IBM Services, Canada. "IBM's CIC in Montréal will focus on delivering value to its clients through applied AI and bringing real solutions to real problems." The new recruits the company is looking for will work as machine learning engineers, data scientists, full stack developers, or data engineers.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is all about augmenting human capabilities rather than replacing humans with machines, says global IT consultancy firm Accenture in a new book. Titled "Human Machine: Reimagining Work in the Age of AI", the book is co-authored by Paul Daugherty, Accenture's Chief Technology and Innovation officer, and Jim Wilson, Managing Director of Information Technology and Business Research. The authors, who claim to have surveyed more than 1,500 organisations, strongly dismiss what they call a'misconception' that AI systems will replace humans, stating that they should be viewed as a resource to help companies reshape their operations, whether that be in customer service or productivity. While AI is resulting in some jobs being lost, the technology's true power is in augmenting human capabilities, they argue. "In other words, AI isn't about making'artificial' super-humans – but about using technology to give humans'superpowers,' equipping them with new skills and capabilities so that they can achieve more and learn faster," said Daugherty.

With all the buzz surrounding artificial intelligence (AI) lately, it has become something you need to have. After all, everyone else seems to have it and you don't want to be left behind, right? Well, I intend to shed some light on what AI really means, why it's here and its different applications for improving customer experience, besides the traditional and well-known virtual agent (or chatbot, chatterbot, virtual assistant, etc.). These days, everything I see or read about enhancing customer engagement through AI is about virtual agents, so I decided to write my own analysis on the topic and further examine what AI really means in our region. As it is the case with so many other buzzwords in the contact center industry (e.g.: digital transformation and omnichannel), and in spite of its many virtues, AI is still poorly understood by most businesses.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is turning out to be a favorite technology for BPO human resources departments, with reports suggesting that Nearshore firms are adopting the technology for recruitment. For example, Atento has employed the technology to identify the right hires for its offices in Mexico, according to Cartademexico.com. For example, it can sift through thousands of resumes in a matter minutes, identifying the right applicant with the required skill sets. Automatic scheduling could be a major time saver for recruiters, as the technology can even schedule interviews with potential hires. Today's AI bots can search through job boards and professional profiles to find a match for a vacancy.

In the last two years, artificial intelligence (AI) has started to become a mainstream topic, but core aspects of AI, like machine learning and data science, have been around for quite some time, so the technology has had plenty of time to impact the industry already. According to a study by Tata Consultancy Services, more than 90% of companies in the energy, high tech, telecom, retail, and automotive industries use AI today. The company researched 13 industries globally and found that more than 80% of companies use AI in some capacity. "Beyond the IT function, artificial intelligence is most often used in customer service, sales, marketing, and finance," states the report. "In energy, 100% of companies use AI – the only industry in which every company is using it. Of the companies that don't use AI today, all expect to by 2020."

Today, businesses of all types need to know how to implement artificial intelligence (AI), as the technology has changed the way organizations do business across the world, and will continue changing it into the foreseeable future. Mark Zuckerberg is not the only leader in technology that understand its value; companies across all sectors are implementing it to suit their own unique needs. AI has already had a positive impact on industries like healthcare, retail, entertainment, and real estate, but its applications are almost limitless, so we can expect to see many more verticals benefiting from the tech in the next few years. While the debate rages on about whether it will reduce human employment, the 2017 Economist Intelligence Unit report, Artificial Intelligence in the Real World, gave some encouraging statistics: 27% of executives in the survey say that introducing AI to business will improve decision making; 26% believe it will improve customer service; 29% say it will improve operating efficiency; and 17% said it would increase sales revenue. Data clearly shows that AI is expected to be a benefit to organizations around the world, so, if you haven't done so already, now is the time to start reviewing the ways it can positively impact your company.

Canada's federal government has set up a CAD$125 million (US$93 million) fund to support academic and research activities in artificial intelligence (AI). The investment will put the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research (CIFAR) in charge of bolstering the country's resources in AI. The institute will use the money to increase the number of post-graduate trainees and researchers studying artificial intelligence, and promote collaboration between the country's major technology research universities in Montreal, Toronto-Waterloo, and Edmonton. "The Canadian government clearly recognizes the importance of artificial intelligence," said Dr. Alan Bernstein, President and CEO of CIFAR. "It will help build a stronger and more innovative economy, create high value jobs, improve transportation, and lead to better and more efficient healthcare and social services."

Contact centers across Latin America are looking to transform their customer service solutions by implementing new channels, such as chat, social media, email, video, or updated voice services, which are still hugely relevant in the region. Within that scope, speech recognition technology is often seen as a means to cut costs, improve customer satisfaction, and increase productivity in the call center. But are these solutions worth it? Speech recognition is performed by a machine or program that can identify words or phrases in spoken language and convert them into a machine-readable format. Beyond interactive voice response (IVR) systems, some of the more popular call center speech recognition applications are call routing, speech-to-text, voice dialing, and voice search.