World’s First Book on Artificial Intelligence in Business Published

Robert Woolliams

May 18, 2017

7 Min Read

The world’s first full-length book dedicated to the practical application of AI in business was published last week at The AI Summit London, with 1500+ delegates each receiving a copy.

AI Transforming Business: Corporate CxO Perspectives contains chapters written by business executives from world-leading organisations. On the solution provider side this includes giants of the space such as SapientRazorfish, NVIDIA, HCL Technologies and Samsung, while on the enterprise end of the spectrum there were chapters from global corporations such as General Electric and AIA, as well as FTSE 100 organisations such as Barclays and Lloyds.

The authors in the book not only hold senior, decision-making positions in their respective organisations, they also share a passion for the opportunity presented by AI, experience in implementing the still-nascent technology and a strong vision on how AI will shape the future of work.

AI Business cofounder and co-editor of the book, George Kipouros, said: “Since 2014, AI Business has been engaging with the thought-leaders pioneering the implementation of AI in the corporate world. In 2017, with AI now one of the hottest topics in the tech world, business leaders are beginning to see tangible results from AI technologies and there was a need for an in-depth exploration of this topic. We are delighted to publish the first book in this field, and thankful to our authors for their valuable contributions.”

Kipouros’s opening chapter addresses the acute need for a pragmatic, facts-based approach to how AI is tangibly transforming business today, and how it will evolve in the future. To do so, he calls upon a comprehensive AI Business survey that asked Fortune 500 C-Suite executives about how they see AI impacting their organisations, understanding their current and future AI projects, concerns and overall strategy.

This tangible, facts-based approach sets the tone for the book, in which the authors approach the topic from largely different angles. Every chapter offers a plurality of views, examples, and expectations, with the common denominator for all being the realisation that there is significant substance behind the hype of AI.

Josh Sutton, Global Head of Data and AI at SapientRazorfish, bases his chapter around the ‘Three ‘A’s of Artificial Intelligence’ (Amplification, Articulation, and Automation), while the VP Innovation at GE, Beena Ammanath, focusing the narrative on industrial applications such as manufacturing, design and supply chain.

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AI Transforming Business in place at The AI Summit

There is a strong representation from financial services in the book, mirroring the advanced engagement with AI in the industry, with different authors providing a variety of perspectives depending on their roles and area of expertise. AIA Group COO Simeon Preston demonstrates how AI will be extensively adopted in insurance and will bring about radical change in the sector, while Noel Lyons, Director of Digital Design at Barclays, builds his chapter on real-life experiments with AI in banking customer service. Lloyds’ Director of Digital Development and Applied Sciences, Marc Lien, takes an alternative approach with an analogy to The Matrix.

There are chapters focusing on specific technologies – Michael Wei, Director of Samsung’s AI Research Center in the US, explores how Natural Language Dialogue could change the future of life and business – and advice on how enterprises can start on their path to becoming AI-centric businesses, such as that by NVIDIA’s Senior Director of AI & Deep Learning, Kimberly Powell.

As a result, what AI Transforming Business uniquely achieves is an extended insight into the attitude and strategic approaches towards AI within large organisations, told from the perspectives of those at the very top.

AI Transforming Business will be available in ebook from 19th May
Please contact Robert Woolliams ([email protected]) to order your copy!

AI Transforming Business features contributions from:

Daniel Pitchford, Commercial Director, AI Business

In his introductory chapter, Pitchford outlines the history of AI before providing definitions for key AI technologies, as well as an overview of the major industry verticals in which AI is finding investment and application.

Georgios Kipouros, Research & Content Director, AI Business

Kipouros goes ‘beyond the hype’ surrounding AI to evidence how CxO business leaders are readily applying the technologies now, and will continue to do so at a rapidly-increasing rate in the short- and long-term future.

Josh Sutton, Global Head, Data and Artificial Intelligence, SapientRazorfish

Opening his chapter with the claim that ‘AI is the most powerful enabler of transformation since the internet’, Sutton combines his wealth of experience in the field with a clear and logical narrative to back it up convincingly.

Beena Ammanath, VP, Innovation, General Electric

Ammanath demonstrates her thought-leadership in the field of AI for the industrial domain with a chapter focused on the key pillars of this space, including manufacturing, design, supply chain and services.

George Zarkadakis, Digital Lead, Willis Towers Watson

Posing the question ‘Is this the End of Work?’, Zarkadakis’s chapter explores how machine intelligence will disrupt jobs, talent and business organisation. Drawing on useful statistics and broader economic factors throughout, Zarkadakis closes with advice for future-proofing your business.

Kimberly Powell, Senior Director of AI and Deep Learning, NVIDIA

Powell outlines the spectrum of today’s AI innovators, with the giants of Google, Baidu, Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and IBM at one end and nimble start-ups on the other, and provides evidence for NVIDIA’s prediction that ‘over the next three to five years, nearly every company in the world will be on their journey toward becoming an “AI enterprise”’.

Jon Catling, Former Director, Global Data Architecture, Las Vegas Sands Corporation

While Catling’s perspective from the luxury hospitality sector naturally focuses on the advancements AI can bring to customer service, he illustrates how the entire business world is experiencing a phase change – one which is happening right now.

Kumar Srivastava, VP, Products & Strategy, BNY Mellon

In a chapter that begins by stating that the future is ‘cut-throat and harsh’, Srivastava predicts how the finance sector will look a decade from now, illustrating how organisations can survive in an increasingly competitive marketplace by assessing specific factors that will need to change as well as those that will not.

Noel Lyons, Director of Digital Design, Barclays

By detailing experiments carried out with his team at Barclays, Lyons provides real-life insight into the successes (and failures) of introducing AI into banking customer service functions, with the aim to make banking completely personalised.

Simeon Preston, Group COO, AIA Group

Demonstrating how AI will be extensively adopted in insurance, Preston takes us through four steps (learn, buy, service, claim) to prove how the technology will bring about radical change in the sector.

 Marc Lien, Director of Innovation & Digital Development, Lloyds Banking Group

Lien shares his perspective of transforming Lloyds Banking Group towards a data and analytics-driven enterprise. His message for all businesses and industries is also made clear: start by starting.

Michael Wei, Director of AI Research Center, Samsung

Beginning with Alan Turing’s dream of a ‘talking machine’, Wei inspects the four types of conversational AI (voice command, question answering, chatbot and task-oriented dialogue) before hailing the new era of ‘chatware’.

Nicole Eagan, CEO, Darktrace

Eagan combines a broad overview of the ‘machine-versus-machine warfare’ that will become more prominent in the age of AI with a detailed analysis of the nature of the ‘war’, demonstrating the potentially devastating capabilities of the ‘unknown unknowns’ of AI-powered hacks, but also the necessity for AI to tackle them.

Kalyan Kumar, CTO, HCL Technologies

Characterising the partnership between humans and machines as an exciting rather than harmful, Kumar explains the necessity for automation – or more specifically, ‘autonomics’ – to succeed in the 21st century enterprise, drawing on case studies of HCL’s DRYiCE platform to evidence his points.

Robert Woolliams, Head of Research, AI Business

Hailing the beginning of a new, AI-powered era for business, Woolliams evaluates key themes that run throughout the book in order to provide a cohesive look ahead into the future.

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