" That's where AI is today; it can solve immediate problems as they arise, sometimes better than people themselves. "
Interview with Antoine Blondeau
Everyone knows Siri, Apple's intelligent personal assistant that uses voice queries and a natural language user interface to answer questions and make recommendations, continuously adapting to users' individual language usages, searches and preferences. But not as many people have heard of Antoine Blondeau, a technology entrepreneur and investor with 20 years of leadership experience in technology marketing worldwide. Mr. Blondeau was president & COO of Zi Corporation, a developer of intelligent user interface software, and CEO of Dejima, a developer of distributed Artificial Intelligence software. He is now co-chairman of the world's high funded AI company Sentient Technologies.
“In the field of Artificial Intelligence, we’re moving towards a critical mass, which was impossible to predict 15-16 years ago,” says Mr. Blondeau. Sentient Technologies has patented evolutionary and perceptual capabilities that provide customers with highly sophisticated solutions, powered by the largest compute grid dedicated to distribute artificial intelligence. “We can already see a time when AI will be an industry, just like the telecoms or automobile sector.”
Our question to Antoine Blondeau
We asked him about his vision for the future and which business opportunities he sees arising from AI.
The three biggest misconceptions about Artificial Intelligence according to Antoine Blondeau:
- Assuming that AI is data, and thus big data or predictive analysis.
Blondeau: “AI represents primarily a capacity for decision-making. You don’t judge human intelligence by memory capacity, but on the ability to make the right decisions, at the right time, in the appropriate circumstances. That’s how AI should also be judged.” - Assuming that there is only one good way to approach AI and put it to use.
Blondeau: “AI isn’t a system, it’s a network of systems. AI, like human intelligence, will be a system of systems.” - Assuming that Google, Facebook and Alibaba are going to win the battle because they have access to data.
Blondeau: “There is an advantage from being able to access data, but it’s by no means the only one. To use an analogy from humankind, when we’re born, we don’t come equipped with a full memory or knowledge base, we learn.”