CIOs are putting a generation of cheaper and more powerful artificial intelligence to use in a range of corporate applications, automating work that people have performed and making it possible to do things that weren’t possible before.

The applications range from practical, highly targeted chatbots to broad-based artificial intelligencessuch as Watson, International Business Machine Corp.’s decision support system. Facebook Inc.’s Messenger service supports at least 33,000 chatbots, including MasterCard’s Kai, as CIO Journal reported. Bottlenose, a startup in Los Angeles, is working to automate the performance of data science,and founder Nova Spivack says he expects the price of such services to fall during the next two years as more advanced neural networks become available. Software from Alphabet’s Google DeepMind projectlearned to navigate the London Underground.

“Any CIO thinking about 2017 has to be considering what AI and knowledge-based systems mean to their business, and what the technology will mean to their clients and customers,” said Phil Fasano, executive vice president and chief information officer at American International Group …

read more