For a forthcoming book with Nitin Mittal of Deloitte, I've been researching companies that are "All In on AI," as the book will be titled. These are companies who have made substantial and long-term bets on the notion that AI will revolutionize the way they do business. In several of the companies, the CEOs have been heavily engaged in the AI-driven transformation process. One of them is Piyush Gupta, the CEO of Singapore-based DBS Bank, whom I have written about elsewhere as an AI leader. Another is Peter Ma, the founder and chairman of Ping An, which is the largest private-sector firm in China.

For a forthcoming book with Nitin Mittal of Deloitte, I've been researching companies that are "All In on AI," as the book will be titled. These are companies who have made substantial and long-term bets on the notion that AI will revolutionize the way they do business. In several of the companies, the CEOs have been heavily engaged in the AI-driven transformation process. One of them is Piyush Gupta, the CEO of Singapore-based DBS Bank, whom I have written about elsewhere as an AI leader. Another is Peter Ma, the founder and chairman of Ping An, which is the largest private-sector firm in China. Ping An makes extensive use of AI to drive its five ecosystems, and my sources tell me that Ma is heavily involved in the decisions around the technology.

Google Cloud Platform plans to invest in customer experience, globally. It will open a number of offices, expand its customer success operations and a training lab, as well as launch a professional services group to get users on their way with Google AI and Vertex AI machine learning platforms. The company's latest efforts include an AI focus, said John Jester, Google Cloud vice president of customer experience, because it's at the core of many new products, businesses and experiences users have built in the cloud. "We [aspire] to train 40 million people on Google Cloud," Jester said. "Every customer conversation I have, every partner conversation I have comes back to there just aren't enough cloud experts on the planet to support this massive wave of migration and adoption."

The day before the annual Army-Navy football game, an even larger interservice rivalry will be contested on video game battlefields. The Call of Duty Endowment (CODE) Bowl on Dec. 11 will match teams consisting of esports athletes from each branch of the U.S. military – Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Space Force – as well as members of the United Kingdom's British Army, Royal Air Force, and Royal Navy. The matches, played on the recently-released "Call of Duty: Black Ops Cold War" game, will broadcast live starting at 1 p.m. ET/10 a.m. "The eight teams representing military branches in the four-hour tournament will each have two popular Call of Duty streamers on board, one serving as captain, and will be coached by a Call of Duty League professional. Well-known streamers joining the teams include Courage, LEGIQN, Huskerrs, Swagg, Espresso, Vikkstar, Tommey, C9Emz, and Spratt. Video games:The new season of'Fortnite' introduces The Mandalorian "We are proud to have the United States and the United Kingdom militaries come together to participate in the C.O.D.E.

For a long time, banks have been at the cutting edge of utilizing innovation to help with both front-of-house and back-of-house tasks. It's nothing unexpected then artificial intelligence in banking is helpful in an assortment of ways. Enormous banks mainly are industry pioneers receiving AI to remain in front of rivalry, give more exceptional client support to clients, increasingly important administrations and contributions, just as changing many back-end forms. On an ongoing AI Today digital broadcast Casey Royer from USAA, a large US bank serving the military network, shared his point of view on how the bank is receiving AI, how they're utilizing AI to widen USAA banking contributions, make their tasks progressively viable and proficient, and offer a more prominent incentive to their developing client base. Established in 1922, USAA is a Texas-based Fortune 500 differentiated monetary administrations organization offering to the bank, contributing, and protection to individuals and families who serve, or served, in the United States military, with over 12.4 million individuals. Because of their broad topographically conveyed client base and requirements for face to face just as on the web and versatile contributions, the organization has put a profoundly cutting edge in innovations.

Implementing transformation technology, including AI, is not always easy. You need to make sure you have the right team in place and expertise in-house, as well as access to data, clean data, money and resources to invest in the project, and parties that are willing to adopt the technology once created. Casey discusses some of the struggles and challenges about implementing AI throughout USAA and their digital offerings. One major challenge they have faced is the access to data. It's no surprise that USAA has very large amounts of data, but one of the big challenges is having real time access to that data to see what is happening. Additionally this has led to challenges with training data.

If you're trying to stay up to date on customer experience and customer service best practices and innovation, it helps to closely follow USAA, the giant in insurance, banking, financial services, car retailing, and other disciplines (all of which are services that USAA offers to its member base worldwide, which consists primarily U.S. servicepeople and their families). I've made a point of doing that myself, as a customer service consultant and author. There's anextensive discussion of USAA's customer experience and customer service-related innovation and the culture of customer service excellence that powers them in my Forbes article here and in my upcoming book, Ignore Your Customers (And They'll Go Away), which HarperCollins Leadership is on the cusp of releasing. USAA's leadership in innovation related to customer service and customer experience is unparalleled. It has over 900 patents based on innovations suggested by employees, most often, incredibly, by employees who are not in technical positions.

Works with experienced team members to conduct root cause analysis of issues, review new and existing code and/or perform unit testing. Learns to create system documentation/play books and attends requirements, design and code reviews. Identifies ideas to improve system performance and impact availability. Creates system documentation/play book(s) and participates as a reviewer and contributor in requirements, design and code reviews. May serve as the subject matter expert on development techniques.

If USAA's pilot app works as intended, it's going to get a lot easier for its customers to shop for a car. By using the app, which will go live Monday for close to a thousand members and employees, customers can point their phone at a vehicle and get an augmented reality overlay that provides all its critical info: the make, model and year of the car, as well as its price range and quotes for insurance and a loan to purchase it. The app is designed to save customers time and embed USAA into the car-buying process. "People's attention spans are so short right now," said Patrick Kelly, assistant vice president of digital product development at USAA. "Giving them all the information at the right moment to make a decision takes a lot of workload out of the process." If the app sounds a little familiar, it should.

Over the last few years, artificial intelligence has helped push the envelope in terms of technological advancements in the financial industry. For example, consumers can use facial recognition to log in to financial apps and use voice commands to check their balances. This year, artificial intelligence is set to disrupt the industry even further. Dr. Jason Mars, a computer science professor at the University of Michigan and the CEO of Clinc, has first-hand knowledge of how artificial intelligence will evolve in 2018. Using deep neural networks, Clinc has developed a conversational AI platform for financial institutions that is like a more advanced "Siri for your bank account" or a "Google Now for your finances," but it supports the same natural language flow that you would have with a personal banker.