"Embrace AI potential"

Robert Woolliams

April 29, 2016

3 Min Read

AIBusiness recently interviewed one of the world’s leading academics in Artificial Intelligence, Dr Jana Koehler. Jana is Professor of Computer Science at the University of Lucerne and President of SGAICO (Swiss Group for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Science).

Jana will bring her AI expertise to The AI Summit in London on 5 May, where she will deliver a keynote exploring how we can take our business processes to the next level with AI.

AIBusiness caught up with Jana to find out her views on AI’s impact on business, the challenges we face in adopting AI and more, looking ahead to her presentation at The AI Summit.

  1. How do you believe AI will impact business overall and in what ways?

It will create many new job profiles that we have not seen before such as, for example, supervisors of AI based decision systems and robot mechanics. Other professions will either disappear and be replaced or be supported by digital assistants.

  1. What do you think are the main challenges in adopting AI technologies, from machine learning through to image recognition, in business?

Understanding where the benefits are and translating those into many beneficial applications while not ignoring the risks. Integrating several AI technologies such that new powerful business solutions become possible.

Also, understanding how a business will change when all players use AI in their processes.

As well as this, it's very important to develop a new economic system that fairly distributes the welfare created by technology and keeps all humans in the professional world (we have enough work and problems and need to make sure that we can pay people to do this work).

And finally, mastering the transformation and cultural change in businesses. Currently, the press is discussing AI as a job killer; however, for many workers, AI will be a companion and supporter. We need to embrace this friendly potential of AI and make it the winning paradigm for the future.

  1. Which type of business do you feel can be optimised most effectively through the implementation of AI?

Any business. Because understanding complex information patterns and obtaining new insights is a chance for everybody. Furthermore, these insights need to be translated into actions where we have a lot of optimization possibilities.

  1. Do you see the relationships between universities, product developers and businesses changing with the more widespread use of AI in business?

We need to be careful not to cause too much hype. I am a little bit concerned about the hype around deep learning. We have seen spectacular successes, but also need to be aware of what the technology can do, how it does it, and where its limitations are.

To master AI, we need to work technology and business as one strong team. Researchers need to become much more interested in understanding the business context of the technology application to leverage benefits and master risk. Business people need to become more technology-savvy to understand what the technology can do for them. Developers need to learn how to embed AI libraries into standard solutions and how to write the code that controls and supervises the AI technology.

At the AI Summit, Dr Jana Koehler will be delivering her keynote: Taking your business processes to the next level with AI: Mastering Opportunities and Controlling Risks.

The AI Summit is the world’s first event dedicated to Artificial Intelligence for the business world. For more information, and to join us on 5 May at the Four Seasons Hotel, London, visit: theaisummit.com

For the latest news and conversations about AI in business, follow us on Twitter @Business_AI and LinkedIn – AIBusiness

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