AI 101: How Artificial Intelligence Is Driving Innovation

Our Connected World | TE Connectivity

Everyone knows the term artificial intelligence, or AI,, and some may understand the impact it has on their lives to varying degrees. But what exactly is AI, and what role is it playing today and into the future?

At TE Connectivity, Chris Blackburn, Technologist on the System Architecture Team, helped break down artificial intelligence for host Tyler Kern.

“AI is everywhere around us in the world,” Blackburn said. “Most of us are familiar with devices in our homes, such as voice assistance like Alexa and Siri. Artificial intelligence is a way for machines to learn and generate data by themselves.”

Up to now, the majority of use cases for AI could be found in the marketing realm to find ways for the right products to reach the right consumers based on consumer behavior on social media and in eCommerce shopping.

“Recommendation engines are one of those primary use cases,” Blackburn said.

Blackburn said AI is beginning to show up in oil and gas exploration, mining and natural resource extraction, farming, and food production.

One of the benefits of AI is its ability to learn from new data, make inferences based on previous data and continue to get smarter. But with advancements come new challenges to solve.

How can we store and transfer massive amounts of data and make it accessible to these machines for learning?

“In the past, 10 to 20 years ago, a lot of the data created in the world was human-generated,” Blackburn said. “And, now, we’re moving into this era of machine-generated data. It’s an absolute data explosion, and it is certainly influencing how we’re building system architecture to handle it.”