Artificial
intelligence is the next big shift in digital enterprise, and tech majors have
caught on early
Twitter’s latest acquisition,
Whetlab, is a start-up that is developing technologies that help companies
implement machine-learning or artificial intelligence (AI) in their systems.
Before this, the micro-blogging giant acquired MadBits, an image-search service
that automatically understands, organises and extracts relevant information
from raw media. In layman terms, the principle on which MadBits works—visual
intelligence for programmes—is the same as the one that guides face recognition
software in, say, a Facebook.
Twitter isn’t alone in its
enthusiasm for machine-learning/AI. Google, Facebook et al are all either
queued up at the doors of start-ups working on AI or are developing it
in-house. While the game first changed for digital giants with the emergence of
smartphones, that led them to either develop mobile-first platforms or acquire
them for millions of dollars just to catch up (Facebook paid huge amounts for
Instagram and WhatsApp),
the shift towards AI is now happening. Google, last year, acquired the British
AI start-up, DeepMind, even as Google Brain, a Google X project, is widely held
to be the leading AI system—though Microsoft claims its Project Adam is better.
With greater recognition of the shift, there will, of course, be more AI
start-ups mushrooming and being acquired—all towards the end of relieving us of
the pressure of thinking too hard.
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