Dive Brief:
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A number of tech industry leaders predict that artificial intelligence and machine learning will soon change life as we know it, according to a Fortune report.
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The leaders, including Tesla Motors and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk and Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, made the predictions at the Recode conference last week.
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A Bank of America report citing IDC research recently predicted that the AI industry will grow to $70 billion by 2020 from just $8.2 billion in 2013.
Dive Insight:
"It’s really early but I think we’re on the edge of a golden era," said Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos during the Recode conference, referring to the rise of AI and machine learning. "It’s going to be so exciting to see what happens."
Bezos said Amazon currently has 1,000 employees working on Alexa, Amazon’s voice-based smart assistant software system. But AI also has the potential to revolutionize enterprise technology.
Many industries—from law and education to manufacturing and medicine—are already employing AI technologies, according to a recent AI forecast from Tractica. Tractica predicts the AI systems market for enterprise applications will increase from $202.5 million in 2015 to $11.1 billion by 2024.
Currently large companies like Amazon and Google have an advantage over startups in this area simply because they have easy access to huge amounts of data. However, that could soon change. Salesforce recently purchased artificial intelligence startup MetaMind.
In April, Google CEO Sundar Pichai emphasized machine learning and artificial intelligence as one of the prime areas for growth in the future. He pointed to that technology as key for boosting the company performance in advertising and cloud services. He also looked toward the trend of "AI first," which he says the company is at the forefront of.
