What a difference a decade makes. From the depths of winter for interest in artificial intelligence at the start of 2010 to the heady excitement and interest in how machine learning using off-shelf chips could be transformative to potentially all businesses in the mid-point of the past decade to today’s greater investment and fundamental improvements in hardware and operating systems required for the next expected burst of activity and investments.
Rob Leclerc, founding partner at venture capital firm Agfunder, completed his PhD at Yale in AI at the turn of the last decade but such was the lack of interest in the topic, ie lack of jobs, he focused on a different space entirely in agriculture. Now, however, the skills he learned at university he can apply through AI technologies to monitoring 33,000 startups targeting one of society’s most basic tool and skillset – growing food for people to eat.
Leclerc is not alone. AI is now the most heavily targeted area for corporate venturers, according to Global Corporate Venturing’s annual survey published last month.
The change has happened thanks to seminal academic research published a decade ago allied to cheaper processing technologies available through gaming chips developed by Nvidia and others and a new generation of AI talent has started to come through, as reporter Callum Cyrus covers in his main feature.
But the opportunities are far greater and the risks and rewards potentially epoch making, which brings a new set of challenges. Ben Lamm in his guest comment identifies the US and China battle for supremacy in this area as an issue and for the American government to set up a $10bn AI fund but no country wants to be left behind in what could be a next economic age.
People went from developing technologies to complement their physical aspects – be stronger, more flexible – and senses but with AI there is the potential to complement ingenuity and thinking. What will the world think of next?
This supplement, supported by Nvidia, In-Q-Tel and others, is the first in a series this year to cover the main areas under development in this field by corporate venturers.
The full Artificial Intelligence Q1 2020 can be downloaded in PDF here.
