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Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Stuart Wall, CEO of Signpost (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: Given that, what does it take for you to sell? You probably have some large customers but you’re also selling to a lot of small businesses.

Stuart Wall: Yes, we started with small. My first customer was my older sister who runs a pottery studio in Indiana. My grandmother and aunt are users. They were most of our first clients. The small business category is a great source of business for us. We really believe in empowering those businesses to be successful. Over time, we’ve started moving upmarket. We have a mid-market and an enterprise aspect to our business as well. >>>

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Stuart Wall, CEO of Signpost (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: What you’re saying is that for all these decisions, which are often manual decisions working off a salesforce.com system or any other CRM system, you work with heuristics and logic such that your intelligent agent is making judgement calls on what actions need to be taken and actually triggering those actions directly? >>>

Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence: Stuart Wall, CEO of Signpost (Part 1)

Virtual Marketing Assistant sounds like a dream. Signpost is making it real. This is a great story about a very promising company.

Sramana Mitra: Let’s start with introducing our audience to Signpost. What do you do? What kind of customers do you work with? What trends do you align with?

Stuart Wall: Signpost is an artificial intelligent CRM. The idea is that tools like Salesforce provide a very important function, i.e. how can companies keep track of their customers and prospective customers. The problem is a lot of marketing technology, including that of Salesforce, is way too hard to use. It’s difficult to set up and is very manual. >>>

5 Thought Leaders in Artificial Intelligence

After publishing my recent article, Must-read Articles on Artificial Intelligence, in which I’ve shared my thoughts and concerns about AI, some have asked for more.

Here are my in-depth interviews with five (actually six) thought leaders who are deeply engaged in artificial intelligence development today that I hope will provide a good overall perspective on where and how AI is being applied today, where AI stands in 2016:

• Or Shani, CEO of Adgorithms. Over time, the entire profession of media buying will be obliterated. Algorithms will do all the work. This is one of the sectors most vulnerable to be entirely automated by AI. Or Shani speaks on the theme and provides a great example of what is already happening.
• Andreas Wieweg, CTO and Andy Peart, CMO of Artificial Solutions. Have you used Siri? Have you used Amazon’s Echo? Have you used any other natural language activated by personal assistant? The world of AI is rife with speculations on where this field is going, and this discussion is a wonderful expose on that topic.

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Must-read Posts on Artificial Intelligence

My deep concerns over the impact that Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Robotics, and over-automation will eventually have on society have led me to write several thought-provoking articles to help raise awareness while course correction is still possible.

Whichever way the future unfolds, we do have some time in hand. The kind of mass scale automation that may eventually come about is still 50-100 years away, most likely. Still, there is a very high probability that massive degrees of automation WILL eventually come about. Huge displacement of workers WILL take place due to such automation. Given that eventuality, are we facing Utopia or Dystopia? My prediction, unfortunately, is the latter.
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Future of Artificial Intelligence: The Triumph of Communism?

I have written several pieces already on my deep concerns about the kind of society we’re moving towards in the next 30-50 years as technology-induced changes sweep through society, rendering hundreds of millions of people unemployable.

Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia?
Future of Artificial Intelligence: Brexit, Trump and Other Calamities
Artificial Intelligence: Just Because We Can, Does It Mean That We Should?
Future of Artificial Intelligence: All Play, No Work Society
Future of Artificial Intelligence: Demonetization

It seems to me that the end game in this thought experiment is the triumph of communism. Let me explain.
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Future of Artificial Intelligence: Demonetization

As a follow-up to my series of articles on Artificial Intelligence, my friend Som Das sent me an article by Peter Diamandis on demonetization and the “abundance” that will be created with the help of technology.

People are concerned about how AI and robotics are taking jobs and destroying livelihoods… reducing our earning capacity, and subsequently destroying the economy.

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Future of Artificial Intelligence: All Play, No Work Society

My earlier post, Future of Work: Utopia or Dystopia? expresses concern about a jobless world. A recent The Atlantic article asks: Would a Work-free World Be So Bad?

People have speculated for centuries about a future without work, and today is no different, with academics, writers, and activists once again warning that technology is replacing human workers. Some imagine that the coming work-free world will be defined by inequality: A few wealthy people will own all the capital, and the masses will struggle in an impoverished wasteland.

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