
McKinsey report: State of AI in 2017 [pdf] - matco11
http://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Industries/Advanced%20Electronics/Our%20Insights/How%20artificial%20intelligence%20can%20deliver%20real%20value%20to%20companies/MGI-Artificial-Intelligence-Discussion-paper.ashx
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code4tee
The last time I talked to some "experts" at McKinsey about data science they
said the leaders in the space were heavily investing in IBM's Watson and
suggested we do the same (this was right before everything started hitting the
fan with Watson). They don't have much credibility in this space, despite
trying very hard to sound credible.

There are some smart people there but their "advice" rarely holds up to
scrutiny when actual experts start poking at it--hence why they focus so
heavily on vague McKinsey 'indexes' and 'benchmarks' that are very smoke and
mirrors.

In the example above some McKinsey "experts" were presenting such BS to a room
of people quite knowledgeable about this stuff and after the first few
questions it was clear they really knew almost nothing about data science, ML
or AI. Indeed even at that time telling a room full of actual experts that the
future was Watson would quite literally get you laughed out of the room.

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jondubois
I think AI is way over-hyped. There are quite a few online tech publications
right now in which more than half of all articles are AI-related; usually
promoting some gimmicky chat-bot startup or some service that reads your
emails to automate stuff (how can that possibly go wrong?), or some AI
advertising service (as if advertising isn't targeted enough)... It all sounds
useless to me.

The vision of the founders of a lot of these companies don't seem to extend
beyond their own nose - They can't really see anything past that gigantic
mountain of VC money.

It seems that for some reason AI has become the last avenue for growth and all
VCs are just rushing to pour all their money into it.

Researchers with PhDs have been working on more or less the AI technologies
for more than 30 years; it's been their life's work; throwing money all over
the place isn't going to make them work any faster - It's just going to
attract unqualified impostors into the industry.

As a founder, it's much easier to come up with a strategy to pocket a good
chunk of that VC money for yourself than to actually solve the problem.

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zaptheimpaler
Spot on. It is amusing to watch though :) I think AI investors may be
perpetuating the hype as it makes it harder for companies to not buy an AI
product or two.. recipe for sharp correction down the road.

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arcanus
Is McKinsey really a good source for predictions? Do they have any in house
expertise on machine learning (I doubt it)? And do they even have a track
record of predictions for strategic, technological trends?

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ghaff
Well, this report isn't really focused on making predictions. It's more
looking at adoption and investments and McKinsey does have a pretty good
understanding of where enterprises are investing time and money for strategic
initiatives.

As far as expertise, I suppose it depends on what you mean. Active AI
practitioners. Probably not except to the degree that they pay outside experts
for input. But they certainly have people who follow technology fields closely
and have technology background. e.g. one of the authors of this report is a CS
PhD, former CIO, and I've seen him speak at CIO conferences on a couple of
occasions.

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denzil_correa
> McKinsey does have a pretty good understanding of where enterprises are
> investing time and money for strategic initiatives.

Isn't this just looking at investments in different areas and compiling a
table?

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ghaff
Well, yes. It's just pulling data together from a bunch of different sources
and interpreting it, talking to people, putting together case studies,
presenting it in a fairly concise format, etc. Certainly other firms are
capable of doing something similar but it's not as if this sort of information
is readily available from a single source to just turn into a table.

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denzil_correa
What exactly are the interpretations beyond the obvious here?

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ghaff
For researcher and practitioners in the field? Probably not a lot. Although
researchers may not have a lot of understanding about how the tech is actually
being used. For the execs who are McKinsey clients or potential clients, it's
probably a useful overview.

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snowman311
"Only 20% of AI-aware firms are adopters." This number is much lower than I
expected considering how routinely advances and applications of AI are
reported in the tech community. There are so many opportunities for
entrepreneurs on the horizon.

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rsp1984
Someone should add a [pdf] to the title

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fulafel
The post title and linked PDF don't sound like the same publication.

The PDF title is "AI: The Next Digital Frontier? Discussion Paper June 2017"

