Ai for Business

  Artificial Intelligence is receiving more than its fair share of public attention. On one side there are promises of miracles, while on the other side there are warnings of doomsday. What is probably missing is a simple listing of clear benefits. This is article is an attempt to create such a list. Artificial Intelligence is more of an ambition than a technology. The ambition is to imitate human capabilities. Since human capabilities range from walking to solving mathematical problems, AI also encompasses systems of various types – ranging from the humble calculator to Google’s DeepMind. In this article, I am majorly referring to the AI systems that try to achieve the cognitive abilities of human beings. Cognitive abilities refer to the processes of our mind such as understanding, reasoning, planning and selecting the right action. Understanding a question and supplying the right answer from our memory is an example of cognitive ability, the one that AI systems called ‘chatbots’ ...

  Understanding Projection Pursuit Regression The following article gives an overview of the paper "Projection Pursuit Regression” published by Friedman J. H and Stuetzle W. You will need basic background of Machine Learning and Regression before understanding this article. The algorithms and images are taken from the paper. ( http://www.stat.washington.edu/courses/stat527/s13/readings/FriedmanStuetzle_JASA_1981.pdf )  What is Regression? Regression is a machine learning technology used to predict a response variable given multiple predictor variables or features. The main distinction is that the response to be predicted is any real value and not just any class or cluster name. Hence though similar to Classification in terms of making a prediction, it is largely different given what it’s predicting.  A simple to understand real world problem of regression would be predicting the sale price of a particular house based on it’s square footage, given that we have da...

Why is it Important for Executives to know about Artificial Intelligence? Imagine you are an IT executive in a company. As per your role, you have to offer IT solutions to problems that your company is facing, be it related to Finance, Sales, HR, Administration, etc. Maybe you are already playing this role. You have successfully implemented IT solutions to challenging problems. You are praised by your CTO, have also received various awards for successful implementations. You have been promoted in the past for this particular skill. You are living in a perfect world, where most of the problems that you are solving can be solved with programming. You are living in a non-Artificial Intelligence world. Now imagine a world, where the problems that industries are facing today are not solved by programming. Imagine your company is facing problems that look difficult to be solved by any number of lines of code, or any number of current software solutions that exist in the market. You ...

  Anomaly Detection based on Prediction - A Step Closer to General Artificial Intelligence Anomaly detection refers to the problem of finding patterns that do not conform to expected behavior [1]. In the last article  "Understanding Neocortex to Create Intelligence" , we explored how applications based on the workings of neocortex create intelligence. Pattern recognition along with prediction makes human brains the ultimate intelligent machines. Prediction help humans to detect anomalies in the environment. Before every action is taken, neocortex predicts the outcome. If there is a deviation from the expected outcome, neocortex detects anomalies, and will take necessary steps to handle them. A system which claims to be intelligent, should have anomaly detection in place. Recent findings using research on neocortex have made it possible to create applications that does anomaly detection. Numenta’s NuPIC using Hierarchical Temporal Memory (HTM) framework is able to do inference...

  Mark Zuckerberg wants to build a robot that can serve as a personal home assistant, like a valet or butler. This is his resolution (he calls it ‘personal challenge’) for 2016. https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102577175875681 He likes to compare his Artificially Intelligent (AI) butler with Jarvis, the fictional character from Marvel films Iron Man. In the movie, Jarvis (Just a Rather Very Intelligent System!) is built by the Iron Man himself, using AI technologies. Butlers have a come a long way since Jeeves, the fictional faithful manservant created by the legendary author P. G. Woodhouse. Jeeves not only takes care of his master Bertie Wooster, but provides ingenious solutions to all of Bertie’s problems, from selecting the right socks to rescuing him from breach of promise suits.   Zuckerberg’s AI butler would help him to run his house and help with his work too. He would understand Zuckerberg’s voice and control music, light, temperature and so on. The but...

  GPU - The brain of Artificial Intelligence Machine Learning algorithms require tens and thousands of CPU based servers to train a model, which turns out to be an expensive activity. Machine Learning researchers and engineers are often faced with the problem of running their algorithms fast. Although initially invented for processing graphics in computer games, GPUs today are used in machine learning to perform feature detection from vast amount of unlabeled data. Compared to CPUs, GPUs take far less time to train models that perform classification and prediction. Characteristics of GPUs that make them ideal for machine learning Handle large datasets Needs far less data centre infrastructure Can be specialized for specific machine learning needs Perform vector computations faster than any known processor Designed to perform data parallel computation NVIDIA CUDA GPUs today are used to build deep learning image processing tools for  Adobe Creative Cloud. According to  NVID...