To be successful with AI, you have to start small
Years ago, Landing.ai founder and former Google Brain researcher Andrew Ng famously declared that artificial intelligence is the “new electricity.” In short, AI will revolutionize the way all businesses will work in the future. But as more companies race to integrate AI into their operations, many are finding that it’s not as easy as they thought it would be.
At VentureBeat’s Transform 2019 conference in San Francisco, Landing.ai VP of transformation Dongyan Wang explained why companies seem to fail so often and the steps they need to take to make meaningful progress. He reiterated Ng’s electricity analogy, saying that when electricity was discovered more than 100 years ago, companies scrambled to figure out what it would mean for the survivability of their business.
Wang said there’s a similar sentiment now about AI in industries all around the world. An explosion of data and accessible computing power have made even non-internet companies interested in AI. The number of AI-related jobs has increased significantly, as has the number of research papers being written on the subject.
“This is the third time AI has really come around. And we believe that this time, this is the real deal,” Wang added. “We’re going to see AI being adopted in the real world and provide business value. We’re going to see that impact for the next 30, 50, or maybe even 100 years.”
Landing.ai has seen this firsthand with its customers. It works with companies who want to see how AI can help improve not just their bottom line, but also their processes. Wang said it takes about 18 to 24 months to understand his clients’ needs and help them develop an internal AI team and strategy.
He brought up an agricultural company in China that wanted to make its harvester machines collect crops autonomously. Landing.
