Artificial Intelligence in Austin

Navidar recently hosted an event that provided unique insights into Artificial intelligence (AI), highlighting Austin-based companies that are solving real-world problems with AI. The sold-out event featured a keynote presentation by IBM Watson’s Chief Technology Officer as well as two panel discussions and an overview of AI. Participating companies included publicly-traded, venture backed, and bootstrapped companies. Sponsors were Capital Factory, TiE Austin, and Austin Technology Council. In this note, we provide key takeaways for this event.

AI OVERVIEW

AI represents a seismic shift in the way humans interact with information, resulting in efficiencies and better decisions—augmented intelligence.

As an umbrella term, AI encompasses multiple technologies that augment human intelligence. These technologies include machine learning (ML), logic & rule based, natural language processing (NLP), chatbots, computer vision, and others (e.g., robotics and self-driving cars).

Affordable cloud services and improving technology are driving accelerated AI innovation.

Cognitive-first development with ML delivers unique results and the process is different than SaaS application development.

Chatbots and messaging platforms represent the next wave of human-technology interaction.

AI innovation is driving M&A by software and Internet titans.

Venture funding for AI was $6.3B in 2017 (through July), nearly double full-year 2016’s $3.7B.

Article Credit – Navidar – Dowload full article here