Artificial Intelligence Makes Strides, but Has a Long Way to Go - WSJ

From a timely AI reality check

"AI, says Ms. Bassa, requires three things that most companies don’t have in sufficient quantities. The first is enough data. Companies like Facebook, Amazon, Alphabet, General Electric Co. and others are harvesting enormous amounts of data, but they are exceptions.

The second is problems where making a small difference can justify the expense of creating an AI system. If AI can improve the fraud-detection system at a credit-card company by 1%, that could be worth tens of millions of dollars. For a midsize manufacturer that makes many different products, however, a 1% improvement in productivity of a particular line might not justify the cost of hiring a half-dozen highly paid engineers.

That leads to the third scarcity: People to build systems. The war for AI talent is driving up the cost. “There are maybe 5,000 people in the world who can put together one of these machine-learning systems in a way that saves money, even if only incrementally,” says Ms. Bassa."

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Artificial Intelligence Makes Strides, but Has a Long Way to Go - WSJ