by Angela Guess

Gigi Peccolo reports in Customer Think, “Artificial intelligence is a growing trend in the business world. The IBM Watson Partner Ecosystem, for instance, allows companies to tap into the power of Watson for fields as varied as healthcare and education. In addition, the Amazon Echo Developer Network allows you to add voice functionality to connected devices and enhance Alexa’s skills. But what impact is this shift having on business? To answer that, we turn to 10 statistics that show where the industry is heading.”

Peccolo’s list begins, “(1) There was more than $300 million in venture capital invested in AI startups in 2014, a 300% increase over the year before. (Bloomberg) (2) By 2020, 85% of customer interactions will be managed without a human. (Gartner) (3) 32% of executives say voice recognition is the most-widely used AI technology in their business. (Narrative Science) (4) By 2018, six billion connected devices will proactively ask for support. (Gartner) (5) 44% of executives believe artificial intelligence’s most important benefit is ‘automated communications that provide data that can be used to make decisions.’ (Narrative Science) (6) By the end of 2018, ‘customer digital assistants’ will recognize customers by face and voice across channels and partners. (Gartner).”

Read the rest of the list here.

photo credit: Flickr/ osde8info