Artificial Intelligence Race

 

Author: Anumbor Ogor

 
Google incorporated, is the Jack of all technology trade, as well as Facebook, Microsoft and others are not left out. 

The lofty desires and odysseys for conquest of this trans-formative technology - Artificial intelligence and machine learning is conspicuous in the recent number of investments and acquisitions these corporations have made in the last three years alone has been far reaching. 

Total investments in AI in 2015 alone reached $2.4Billion with the total number of 397 deals made. According to Forrester they say deals may reach $1.2 Trillion by 2020. 

According to financial experts, AI is foreseen in the tech world as of now to become top business priority. I mean mammoth investment of green back on hiring best brains and talents to push for R&D on AI. 

Development efforts have been collective on machine learning and the leading giant corporations are Microsoft, Facebook, Google, Apple, IBM, others. These corporations understand that the leaders of tomorrow's "tech" future must be the brace themselves in preparation.

Machine learning is a type of artificial intelligence (AI) that provides computers with the ability to learn without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning focuses on the development of computer programs that can teach themselves to grow and change when exposed to new data.

Machine learning is a subset of AI and we have a technique inside machine learning called deep learning- or more properly deep neural networks. Neural networks are software constructs, originally inspired by the way the brain works that enable machines to teach themselves how to recognize complex patterns.  They have already been responsible for enormous strides in machine translation, natural language processing, image recognition, and computer vision. Speech recognition - which powers Amazon's Alexa, Apple's siri, Microsoft's cortana, Google Now, according to Roger Parloff.

Machine learning can read text and work out whether the person who wrote it is making a complaint or offering congratulations. they can listen to a piece of music, decide whether it is likely to make someone happy or sad, and find other pieces of music to match the mood. they can understand a picture and tell you whether the person is a male or female, or if they are wearing sun glasses, or tell the colour of their hair and their mood - happy or sad.(Bernard Marr)

Next, I highlight some of the leading corporations' AI products, investments, and recent acquisitions in the last five years.

Microsoft

 

Experts have opined that “Microsoft has continued to make smart acquisitions and organic investments on AI and connected home”. Microsoft humongous investment is mind-blowing. Months ago, they installed a new AI division with 5000 persons. Imagine, the software giant would be paying wages to this division with about 1 billion per year in salaries.

Microsoft has already been busy with AI which features in their Cortana – an AI digital assistant with speech, and Skype that can translate to six languages in real-time. Microsoft Project Oxford has also been setup to understand users face, emotion, speech APIs (Application Program Interfaces).

Microsoft has also acquired AI startups which includes: Netbreeze, Equivio, Genee.

Google 

In  2014, Google acquired DeepMind, a UK based tech start up headed by CEO-Demis Hassabis, for a sum of $400 million, which has by far proven to be a game-cshanger when their AlphaGo AI program beat South Korean master Lee Se-dol in an ancient Chinese board game Go early in March. Google's DeepMind corporation is a kind of face for Google AI efforts.

Other Google’s AI technologies include: their search engine, Google Now, for speech recognition, natural language translation, image recognition, etc.

Google also acquired DNN Research, Cleversense, Emu, Jetpac, Granata Division systems, MoodStocks, Api.ai, and two others. 

Facebook

Built the Deepface in 2014 with a recognition rate of 98% which is used on their website and was built using a Deep Learning framework is able to identify their users and target specific adverts to them based on their percieved preferences.  Also, Facebook is helping blind people ‘perceive’ photos by using AI to narrate to them via its iOS app. Furthermore, it is using AI to produce detailed maps illustrating population density and the access to internet across the globe. Facebooks AI startup acquisitions includes also include face.com and Wit.ai.

Apple 

Apple plans to focus on facial technology as it is obvious in their acquisition of the AI startup Emotient. They have also acquired London-based startup, Vocal IQ, most likely to develop and enhance their Siri AI speech software. They have also acquired Perceptio, Turi, and tuplejump

IBM 

Maker of Watson, a computer system capable of answering questions asked in natural language. IBM is aiming to use computers to extract meanings from photos, videos, text and speech. They have acquired AlchemyAPI and Explorys,

Partnerships

Furthermore, these tech corporations; Apple, Microsoft, Facebook, IBM, Amazon, Google, according to Roger Parloff, said in September that they are launching a non-profit organization to advance public understanding of artificial intelligence and to formulate best practices on the challenges and opportunities within the field. The partnership will conduct research and recommend best practices relating to “ethics, fairness and inclusivity; transparency, privacy, and interoperability; collaboration between people and AI systems; and the trustworthiness, reliability and robustness of the technology” according to the announcement.

The partnership could possibly be the response to growing concerns of unsupervised AI researches. Some of the people who have been opting for regulated AI researches includes; Elon Musk, Steve Wozniak, Stephen Hawking, others.

Open AI, is a not-for-profit AI research company by Elon Musk, CEO of Telsa Motors and Space X, and Sam Altman, Y Combinator CEO, is a project which seek to educate the public on the positive uses of AI. Open AI has in the last two weeks released Universe, which is an open-source machine learning tool, a software platform for measuring and training an AI's general intelligence across the world's supply of games, websites and other applications.Plans are put to spend billions on research in the next few years.

Narrow AI, General AI

AI explosion is attributed to the wide availability of GPUs (Graphic Processing Unit) that make parallel processing ever faster, cheaper, and more powerful. it also has to do with the simultaneous one two punch of practically infinite storage and a flood of data of every stripe - images, text, transactions, mapping data, you name it.

General AI has remained in the movies and science fictions novels for good reason; we can't pull it off, at least not yet, scientists say. Narrow or applied AI; technologies that are able to perform specific tasks as well as, or better than, we humans can. Examples of narrow AI are things such as image classification and face recognition on Facebook. These technologies exhibit some facets of human intelligence.

General AI remains officially the ultimate goal for humans.

References

AI-Emma Mansi (not human) (2016), Artificial Intelligence Analyzes Microsoft, March 7, 2016, http://www.dividend.com/news/2016/03/07/artificial-intelligence-analyzes-microsoft/. Date accessed: December 11, 2016. 9.00pm.

CBInsights.com (2016) The Race for AI: Google, Twitter, Intel, Apple In a Rush to Grab Artificial Intelligence Startups, December 6, 2016. https://www.cbinsights.com/blog/top-acquirers-ai-startups-ma-timeline/. Date accessed: December 9, 2016, 7.00am.

Mercer, C. (2016) Nine Tech Giants Investing in Artificial Intelligence: Microsoft, Google, Uber and more are investing in AI: What is their plan and who are other key players? December 6, 2016. http://www.techworld.com/picture-gallery/big-data/tech-giants-investing-in-artificial-intelligence-3629737/. Date accessed: December 9, 2016, 8.00pm.

Parloff, R. (2016) AI partnership launched by Amazon, Facebook, Google, IBM, and Microsoft. September 28, 2016. http://fortune.com/2016/09/28/ai-partnership-facebook-google-amazon/. Date accessed: December 6, 2016, 6.00pm.

Press, G. (2016), Forrester Predicts Investment in Artificial Intelligence Will Grow 300% in 2017, November 1, 2016. http://www.forbes.com/sites/gilpress/2016/11/01/forrester-predicts-investment-in-artificial-intelligence-will-grow-300-in-2017/#412beadbafef. Date accessed: December 11, 2016, 9.00pm.

 

Rouse, M. (2016) Machine Learning, February 2016, http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/machine-learning.