Artificial Intelligence is everywhere!

When the little wireless speaker in your kitchen acts on your request to add chocolate milk to your shopping list, there’s artificial intelligence (AI) working in the cloud, to understand your speech, determine what you want to do, and carry out the instruction.

When you send a text message to your HR department explaining that you woke up with a vision-blurring migraine, an AI-powered chatbot knows how to update your status to “out of the office” and notify your manager about the sick day.

When hackers attempt to systematically break into the corporate computer network over a period of weeks, AI sees the subtle patterns in historical log data, recognizes outliers in the packet traffic, raises the alarm, and recommends appropriate countermeasures.

AI is nearly everywhere in today’s society. Sometimes it’s fairly obvious (as with a chatbot), and sometimes AI is hidden under the covers (as with network security monitors). It’s a virtuous cycle: Modern cloud computing and algorithms make AI a fast, efficient, and inexpensive approach to problem-solving. Developers discover those cloud services and algorithms and imagine new ways to incorporate the latest AI functionality into their software. Businesses see the value of those advances (even if they don’t know that AI is involved), and everyone benefits. And quickly, the next wave of emerging technology accelerates the cycle again.

AI can improve the user experience, such as when deciphering spoken or written communications, or inferring actions based on patterns of past behavior. AI techniques are excellent at pattern-matching, making it easier for machines to accurately decipher human languages using context. One characteristic of several AI algorithms is flexibility in handling imprecise data: Human text. Specially, chatbots—where humans can type messages on their phones, and AI-driven software can understand what they say and carry on a conversation, providing desired information or taking the appropriate actions.

If you think AI is everywhere today, expect more tomorrow. AI-enhanced software-as-a-service and platform-as-a-service products will continue to incorporate additional AI to help make cloud-delivered and on-prem services more reliable, more performant, and more secure. AI-driven chatbots will find their ways into new, innovative applications, and speech-based systems will continue to get smarter. AI will handle larger and larger datasets and find its way into increasingly diverse industries.

Sometimes you’ll see the AI and know that you’re talking to a bot. Sometimes the AI will be totally hidden, as you marvel at the, well, uncanny intelligence of the software, websites, and even the Internet of Things. If you don’t believe me, ask a chatbot.

Read more in my feature article in the January/February 2018 edition of Oracle Magazine, “It’s Pervasive: AI Is Everywhere.”