It is easy to think of AI as a software development, or software product. But it is much more fundamental. Artificial Intelligence is a super powered utility that is going to drive enormous value and business in every sector, every market. It is not froth to say that we are standing at the edge of an epoch as significant as the industrial revolution.
And Artificial Intelligence is the new electricity.
Andrew Ng, the noted AI researcher, first started saying this about two years ago. This video may feel like TLDV (too long didn’t view) but for those who DO hang on, the revelations come fast and furious, as well as the clear indicators for incredible business models.
The hard data shows that outside of straight up software applications, AI is going to drive 13 trillion dollars of value. Yes that’s TRILLION with a T. The biggest single market sector to feel the effect ? Retail.
And it’s not going to be strictly transactional or driving insights (although that will be huge). AI is going to be wielded to create incredibly malleable and reactive retail architectural and experiential spaces.
As AI is implemented to sense, test, and change environments dynamically (media, interactivity, lighting, sound, experience), we will begin to see the results of what I call Architectural Intelligence.
It would be easy to think that the barrier to entry will be too high for supporting or startup industries that will want to leverage AI to energize their market place. But access to AI is becoming as easy to achieve as access to web hosting, or ecommerce capabilities. Witness Amazon Web Service’s new cloud based AI development ‘utility’.
A quick look at use cases for the AWS artificial intelligence shows the NFL using it to create exciting predictive stats for game graphics and commentaries, Capital One leveraging it to create the most secure credit card transaction functionality in the market, F1 Racing deploying it to create rich fan experiences, and GE using it to completely revolutionize health care diagnostics.
Here’s the deal. If you are an agency, a brand, an architect, or a big institutional entertainment company, AI is about to disrupt and expand your practice in ways that are probably hard to grasp right now, but will seem as inevitable as the changes brought about by electric light.
Artificial Intelligence IS the new electricity. It’s time for us all to become creative, technologically empowered electricians.