Right now, a new breed of technology supplement that formerly only existed in Star Trek movies, is creeping up as part of back end components in various platforms. Sometimes referred to as ‘machine learning,’ artificial intelligence (or AI) applications are becoming a real, applicable form of simulated intelligence for all sorts of useful purposes in business.

There’s a bit of apprehension about this technology, especially from those who have watched The Terminator series one too many times. I’d wager there’s likely some fan fiction in circulation on the web about how Skynet becoming a reality, in addition to fun articles like this one published on Huffington Post, despite a glaring slippery slope used to make its point. Too, there’s the caveat from great minds like Stephen Hawking and Elon Musk, as recently seen in this segment from the Joe Rogan Experience.

Though Musk warns about AI because of the possibility to weaponize the idea, it’s already making major waves in business for the greater good. Recently, Microsoft has been plugging this technology into various platforms, such as Azure and Dynamics 365, which I feel boasts major (not revolutionary) benefits for business.

I feel that to understand how AI benefits business – that is, before the supposed end of times it’s projected to cause – requires learning some of what’s going on underneath in this system’s brain. Below, I’ll explain AI beginning with the Microsoft Azure Cloud and apply this to what it means for data.

An explanation of AI using Azure Cloud and football as an example

The Azure cloud is one of a few major platforms from Microsoft that now includes AI options for business computing. The problem is, if you visit the landing page for the Azure AI platform you won’t learn a whole lot – it’s basically typical,
tech-marketing fluff.

Further, even the Azure sub-pages fall short of clearly explaining value based on the underlying operation of this technology. My thoughts are, to understand how the technology actually benefits a business, you need to explore core of the intelligence aspect of the platform.

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