At the Marketing AI Institute, we read dozens of articles on artificial intelligence every week to uncover the most valuable ones for our subscribers and we curate them for you here. We call it 3 Links in 3 Minutes. Enjoy!
Yext Brain is Here
If you search for a company’s annual revenue online, it should only take you a few clicks to find the number. But what about if you want to ask your Google Home or Amazon Alexa the same question? Because of the way the internet is organized, chances are slim your device can answer you. But it’s 2018, shouldn’t this be an easy command? Thanks to digital knowledge management company Yext, it will be soon.
Yext Brain, a “cloud software solution that reorganizes facts, figures, and other business information into an easily parsable format,” was announced at Yext’s annual ONWARD conference this week, according to VentureBeat.
Yext Brain connects the dots between user search queries and the information on company websites using a customizable entity graph. It comes equipped with entities like Events, Locations, Professionals, Products, Limited Time Offers, and more, but businesses can also create their own.
With Yext Brain, businesses can be sure the data on their site is in an AI-ready structure and syncs with AI-enabled customer services like voice assistants, smart speakers, and chatbots.
For more details on Yext Brain and other product releases announced at #ONWARD18, read the full VentureBeat article here.
AI Early Adopters See Positive ROI
Deloitte just released its second annual State of AI in the Enterprise report and the findings are promising for early adopters of artificial intelligence, according to ZDNet.
In a survey of 1,100 IT workers and executives from US-based companies, 82 percent of early adopters have seen positive returns from their AI investment. In fact, the median ROI for AI projects is 17 percent.
However, these numbers don’t ring true for all industries. Life sciences and healthcare early adopters of AI have seen lower returns than tech companies. According to the report, “Some healthcare ‘big bang’ projects have disappointed thus far. However, advances in fields as diverse as radiology and hospital claims management show that AI offers substantial potential for value in healthcare, despite some high-profile stumbles.”
Also included in the survey are the types of AI being deployed. So far, 63 percent of early adopters are spending on machine learning, 62 percent on natural language processing, 57 percent on computer vision, and 50 percent on deep learning neural networks.
The easiest path to AI? For 59 percent of respondents, that looked like an enterprise software with AI, while 53 percent co-developed AI programs with partners.
View the full report here.
Startup Paying 600,000 Users to Train AI
Business Insider recently shared one of the worst-kept secrets in the tech world: “It takes a whole lot of human labor to make artificial intelligence...intelligent.”
To compete with giants like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, virtual startup incubator Hive is leveraging human help through gamification.
The startup best known for its image recognition system is paying 600,000 users to train its AI systems. Through a smartphone app or website, Hive Works users get paid pennies to categorize images, transcribe a snippet of audio, or identify all images with a common item, like a car.
While the payout isn’t huge, Hive CEO Kevin Guo compares the work to a “game” like Candy Crush Saga but instead of losing money, you’re earning it.
Workers are tested through small challenges that ensure users are paying attention before they’re allowed to contribute.
The human-contributed knowledge is then used to train Hive’s AI systems for customers like NASCAR, who use it to “track how often and how long a corporate logo is displayed on the screen during a race, which is information that advertisers love having.”
Image: Yext.
Ashley Sams
Ashley Sams is director of marketing at Ready North. She joined the agency in 2017 with a background in marketing, specifically for higher education and social media. Ashley is a 2015 graduate of The University of Mount Union where she earned a degree in marketing.