AIoT: by bringing together the impact of AI and IoT – a new model for revolutionizing business is born.
1989 marked a year when “The World Wide Web” was launched. Then, a huge number of machines were connected.
When GPS became viable between 1994 to 2000 the creation of unfathomable data happened along with the connectivity of network devices. An era when the term “Internet of Things” was first coined by Kevin Ashton, co-founder of Auto-ID Center at MIT.
As Ashton postulates, “If we had computers that knew everything there was to know about things, using data they gathered without any help from us, we would be able to track and count everything and greatly reduce waste, loss, and cost.”
Despite knowing the facts, we’re still lagging.
According to Tencent, there are merely 300,000 AI engineers worldwide, and we need a million. The figures are speculative, and we still find tech giants facing challenges about hiring AI engineers, AI researchers, and AI specialists for their organization.
What strikes your mind when you think of the term IoT?
Perhaps a bunch of devices understanding each other via connectivity. Today, IoT allows us to connect independent devices, exchange data and allows us to even interact with each other. Now you can imagine the kind of data that these devices collect – this is where the envisioning of artificial intelligence comes into the picture.
Simply put, IoT helps in connecting multiple devices and AI builds the ability to take the right decisions at the right time.
The powerful combination of AI in IoT (AIoT) is predicted to be a smart future.
As Maciej Kranz, Vice President of Corporate Strategic Innovation at Cisco says, “without AI-powered analytics, IoT devices, and the data they produce throughout the network would have limited value.”
A future where machines are not just dumb devices but an intelligent creation that works in tandem with human beings.
AI and IoT in action
Both of these technologies possess a significant impact on multiple industries today. You can also term IoT as the digital nervous system and artificial intelligence as your brain to help you in making decisions. The lethal combination of AIoT poses to revolutionize business in ways you cannot imagine.
Without AI-powered analytics, IoT devices, and enough data the AI-system might face challenges to stay relevant in creating a new business value proposition.
Zion market research predicts the global AI market in IoT is bound to reach USD 19.9 billion by 2025 at a CAGR, which approximately sums up to around 25.89% for the forecast between two years i.e. 2019 and 2025.
Upcoming disruption in the tech industry
Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things Convergence: AIoT Technologies, Integration, Infrastructure, Solutions, Applications and Services by Industry Vertical 2018 – 2023 predictions: –
Within 2023,
- The total AI-driven networking solution market is predicted to reach USD 5.9 billion.
- IoT to represent 83% of the AI chipset in the market
- There will be over 50% of enterprise organizations to leverage AI technology for networking.
Manufacturers and solution providers are already taking advantage of the digital era and are positioning themselves for the evolving technology shift.
This is where AI specialists present challenges of how to analyze the connected network of devices. With more devices comes more data – data that has the potential of giving great insight that is beneficial for businesses.
A case study:
How Starbucks has dialed up its artificial intelligence to grow a million active members by 15% at the end of the fourth quarter of 2019?
Starbucks saw a potential rise of up to 3% in its shares by the end of the fourth quarter this 2019. An additional 3% rise was driven through the average ticket and comparable transaction marking it to be one of the best performances in the U.S. so far. Overall, the U.S. Starbucks Reward loyalty program rose to 17.6 million active members by the end of this fourth quarter – i.e. a year-over-year approximately 15% of growth.
How?
For example, whenever a customer joins “Starbucks Rewards” their spending limit automatically increases due to extra benefits such as bonus coupons or discounts.
Kevin also pointed out how AI investment played a major role as an element of Starbucks “digital strategy and how it has increased digital customer relationships.” For the record, Starbuck has been increasing its in-house capabilities and investments in AI through its initiative called “Deep Brew.” This has been taking place over the past year.
The “Deep Brew” initiative
This initiative powers up their personalization engine, optimizes their store allocations and helps drive inventory management in their stores. This is done to leverage the initiative to free up partners so that they will be able to spend more time connecting to their customers. Keven says, “Deep Brew is a key differentiator for the future.”
The process:
Starbucks utilizes AI through its Mastrena expresso machines. This is now added across the U.S. fleet in the expectation that it gets over within the next 12 months in the state as well as internationally. The stupendous part about these machines is that they have IoT sensors built into their system, which easily helps Starbucks obtain telemetry data that goes into their support center.
For every shot of espresso that’s being pulled, you will easily be able to see whether the machine requires maintenance and tuning.
AIoT: the emerging future of industry 4.0
AI and IoT are the two trends dominating the technology industry today. Though this may sound as technology buzzwords – it isn’t, at least not for the industrial automation.
AIoT is predicted to redefine the future of industrial automation and said to lead the industry 4.0 revolution.
Artificial intelligence projects to supercharge industrial IoT at two different levels altogether.
- Impact telemetry data through sensors with intelligence
- AI to be used in analyzing the inbound data stream in batches (plugs itself into the smart devices along with the end analysis) at the IoT spectrum
The kind of AI engineer who combines learning from electronics (IoT) along with machine learning, robotics, cloud, and data management (DevOps) will be in high demand.
Technologies such as AI and IoT confirms that the future is here and why not, these technologies perfectly complements each other.
Digital technology, pervasively, is getting embedded in every place: everything, every person, every walk of life is being fundamentally shaped by digital technology — it is happening in our homes, our work, our places of entertainment. It’s amazing to think of a world as a computer. I think that’s the right metaphor for us as we go forward.
Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.
