Discussion 7: What Is the Current Reality of Artificial Intelligence?

There is a lot of discussion (hype?) about artificial intelligence now. Find examples where organizations
are using AI to solve a business problem. (Please do NOT use self-driving cars as an example.) What
problem is the organization trying to solve? What will AI reduce the cost of? How well do you think the
actual AI in the example is able to solve the business problem?

We all are hearing IBP Watson everywhere in many applications. One of the use cases, I came across is
the “LifeLearnSofie”. Talking about dogs and cats, a veterinarian diagnoses and treats more than 300 dog
breeds, 70 cat breeds representing more than 1,500 possible conditions. The problem here is, it is difficult
for Vets to treat diverse range of conditions in various breeds. Since pets can’t express like humans, Vets
need helps and the help came in the form “Sofie”- It’s a mobile application that gives answers to natural-
language questions based on Vet’s specific context. Sofie understands over 800 medical conditions and
cancers, based on a knowledge set of 44,000 pages of research and veterinary medical literature and
provides proactive care. It can process unstructured data, a technology like this which allows Watson
(Sophie) to understand not just the context of a search but even the intention and tone or the questioner.

AI reduces the cost of not having Vet’s to spend much time - When vets don’t know something, they often
turn to books, but that takes time and doesn’t account for new research. Internet searches are a poor
substitute, often including results from questionable sources, rather than peer-reviewed journals. I think
AI is solving the problem here by helping providing Vet’s a knowledge database of more than 800 medical
conditions and taking unstructured data as input and providing proactive care. It is a good use case as you
still rely on the Vet and they use Sofie to provide the answers.

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/ca/en/gm-superhuman-ai-technology-vets.html

http://www-07.ibm.com/innovation/in/smarterplanet/think/veterinary-care/