AI Articles and Analysis in Consumer goods

The International Federation of Robotics reports that the U.S. service robot industry, which includes both industrial and domestic sectors, is a $5.2 billion market. It also estimates that home robots or domestic robots will contribute $11 billion in revenue by 2020.

Episode summary: This week, AI in Industry features Dr. David Franke, Chief Scientist at Vast. David talks about how AI can work with scarce transaction data to derive meaningful analytics for big purchases, such as cars and houses. He elaborates on how the AI can glean information from user interaction and marketplace data to provide customers with the relevant product fit, deals and recommendations on big purchases. He also discusses the future trends and business benefits for early adopters of AI for purchase recommendations of high-cost items. 

Expert systems and machine learning are two ends of a spectrum working to solve similar problems quite differently. One one hand you have if-then scenarios and a logical approach, and on the other you have vast neural networks and a big data approach. Some companies exist to try and bridge the gap between the if-then rule systems and the massive piles of data. They hope to find a middle ground of sorts, one that mitigates their individual disadvantages. One such company is Montreal’s fuzzy.ai.

The U.S. Energy Information Agency (EIA) defines renewable energy as an energy source that naturally regenerates, such as solar or wind. In contrast, fossil fuels are considered finite. The EIA reports that in 2016, 10 percent of all energy consumed in the U.S. was derived from renewable energy sources. This is equivalent to roughly “10.2 quadrillion British thermal units (Btu) —1 quadrillion is the number 1 followed by 15 zeros”.

The K-12 online tutoring market is a growing sector and is projected by market research firm Technavio to reach $120.67 billion by 2021. Growing numbers of students are taking college entrance exams such as the SAT and tutoring industry giants such as Khan Academy are helping students meet their test prep goals.

Food processing is one of the major manufacturing sectors in the United States. According to the United States Department of Agriculture, 16 percent of the value of shipments from all U.S. manufacturing plants comes from food processing plants. These plants employ around 1.5 million workers in this country.

Facial recognition technology has been traditionally associated with the security sector but today there is active expansion into other industries including retail, marketing and health. By 2022, the global facial recognition technology market is projected to generate an estimated $9.6 billion in revenue with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 21.3 percent*.

The food service industry is an economic staple generating billions of dollars in annual revenue and representing 2.1 percent of the U.S. GDP in 2016. Technology has made on-demand food ordering possible and the industry is pivoting towards more innovative approaches to meet and exceed customer expectations. As a result, artificial intelligence applications are steadily making their way into the food service industry.