The Innovation Index analyses the market attractiveness, business model maturity and infrastructure and support impact of a given sector or technology. This is the first part of the new Innovation Index for Artificial Intelligence. It aims at analyzing Artificial Intelligence market attractiveness through facts, figures and key words analysis, as collected through WAI networks. The second part will evaluate infrastructure and support impact, and the last part will analyze business model maturity to come to a final index value. To know more, your can watch “Hadoop, the turning point“, an end-to-end Innovation Index from earlier this year.

Hard Facts Analysis: Artificial Intelligence under high scrutiny

1. “Artificial intelligence (AI) is arguably the most exciting field in robotics. It’s certainly the most controversial: Everybody agrees that a robot can work in an assembly line, but there’s no consensus on whether a robot can ever be intelligent.” Eamon Kunze, WT VOX

2. “There is a palpable increase in machine intelligence across the touchpoints of our lives, driven by the proliferation of data feeding into intelligent algorithms capable of learning useful patterns and acting on them” Vasant Dhar, O’Reilly Radar

3. “There are so many algorithms available. The difficulty is that there are classes of method and there are extensions to methods and it quickly becomes very difficult to determine what constitutes a canonical algorithm.” Mo Data, PandaWhale

4. “The lack of sophistication in most AIs can be further illustrated by the fact that even large organisations that have started using artificial intelligence haven’t completely succeeded.” Sagar Mohan, Saffron Interactive

5. “The collision between people and big data has caused an explosion of machine learning innovations, with one natural home being in modern data preparation – the steps of understanding, cleaning, shaping, and correlating data prior to it being ready for analytics.” Nenshad Bardoliwalla, Dataconomy

6. “We can’t continue to move forward in an environment where our ethical desires in AI are ignored in the same way we’re tracked without direct access to the insights surrounding our personal data.” John C Havens, The Guardian

7. “But Martin Ford, author of Rise Of The Robots: Technology and The Threat Of A Jobless Future, suggests we are now at a tipping point where robotics, if not handled right, may trigger mass unemployment and economic collapse.” Simon Worrall, National Geographic

WAI Comment: Innovation practitioners describe two potential futures where Artificial Intelligence is either an opportunity or a threat. They all agree on the fact that AI will be part of the future, and specialists are highlighting the need to think about the impact we want AI to have on our lives. They also all agree on the fact that this will all take place in a “not so distant” future, an almost tomorrow which is in line with the initial grade: 1.4/5.

Key Market Trends Impact: Artificial Intelligence well underway

1. “The total M2M revenue opportunity will be USD1.6 trillion in 2024, up from USD500 billion in 2014, a CAGR of 12%. This includes devices, connectivity and application revenue. The majority of the revenue comes from devices.” M2M World News

2. “Facebook has decided to create an AI research team in Paris. Six people have just joined and 6 others will be recruited by the end of the year.” David Larousserie, Le Monde

3. “Ostensibly benevolent artificial intelligence, in rudimentary form, is already here, but we don’t trust it. ” Thomas Claburn, Information Week

4. “Amazing progress is being made in the underlying hardware and software. In part, that’s because costs have plunged. The single-axis controller, a core part of most robots’ inner working, has plunged in price from $1,000 to $10. And according to Rob Nail, the chief executive of Singularity University, the price of critical sensors for navigation and obstacle avoidance has fallen from $5,000 to less than $100.” Vivek Wadhwa, The Washington Post

5. “If we want Twitter — or any other online conversation — to be actually worthwhile, we have to be willing to put in at least that amount of effort. Otherwise we’ll be left with a social network where the only folks socializing are just robots, talking to other robots.” Alexandra Samuel, HBR

6. “Best estimates for claims related to all repetitive strain injuries put the cost to industry at $20 billion per year, not counting the high costs of lost productivity. Protecting workers makes financial sense, and though robots are often seen as a threat to industrial labor, the new class of wearable robotic devices may be the best bet to aid a workforce long beset by injuries and physical discomfort.” Greg Nichols, ZD Net

7. “The global service robotics market is set to boom, and the second half of 2015 should usher the first wave of these new helpers.” ZD Net

WAI Comment: There are immediate effects that can be seen from existing development of AI. They come in the form of worries that robots “invade” our social and economic space, pointing to the fact that we do not trust AI yet. Yet the opportunity is measurable. With a high market potential combined with decreasing costs of development, AI is seen a being a strategic opportunity for major players already and strategies are being concretely rolled-out. We even start to hear specialists considering how robots could protect us. The intermediate grade reflects this market driven enthusiasm: 3.2/5. 

Semantic Analysis: Artificial Intelligence is just next door

1. “What makes this chatbot different from others is that is uses learning techniques.” Morgane Tual, Le Monde 

2. “Since el Kaliouby started working on the Affectiva algorithms, the software has logged 11 billion of these data points, taken from 2.8 million faces in 75 countries. With its massive data set, el Kaliouby believes Affectiva has developed an accurate read on human emotions. The software can, in effect, decode feelings.” Jessi Hempel, WIRED

3. “Worker power matters, ironically, because it’s difficult to imagine the productivity growth necessary to get to this world without some sense that labor is strong. If wages are stagnant or even falling, what incentive is there to build the robots to replace those workers?” Mike Konczal, Next New Deal

4. “Twitter said it will use Whetlab’s technology to accelerate its own machine learning research, which it uses to surface more relevant content.” Fool.com

5. ““The use of smart equipment will help the company to tackle the labour shortages,” Luo said. “We will only need to recruit fewer than 200 software technicians and management personnel when the industrial robots are installed.”” The Telegraph

6. “UK researchers have taught a computer how to “see”, turning it into a machine that doesn’t just scan the night skies, but can also recognise galaxy types without any human help.” Clara Guibourg, City AM

7. “Yes, we will have replaced those people. So there are some people who get replaced in robotic applications. But if you look at the growth of industry around it and the entrepreneurism, the start-ups — people get creative for what to do to take the place of that job. I’m a fan of that.” Mary Cummings for Nicole Laskowski, Tech Target

WAI Comment: Technological advances are increasingly bringing AI closer to a market reality. Beyond technology, a shift seems to enable specialists to now foresee practical innovation and improvements enabled by AI.  Moreover, some experts start to describe another potential social change that would see entrepreneurship and new types of activities replace the jobs we leave to robots. This all has a taste of “too good to be true” and the “high scrutiny” reflected in the first part of this analysis balances this view. Yet the final grade shows a high attractiveness to market: 4.1/5.