Artificial intelligence, once the stuff of science fiction, is now slowly meshing into the fabric of our everyday existence.
From chatbots in Facebook that can talk to customers to Google's Alpha Go that defeated a world champion in the ancient strategy board game of "Go," the sophistication of artificial intelligence is growing exponentially every year upending our lifestyles in ways never before seen since the dawn of the Industrial Age.
One company that is taking full advantage of the paradigm shift is Salesforce.
Hello, Einstein!
Salesforce is one of Silicon valley's luminaries specializing in software development for sales and marketing, catering to both large companies and freelancing individuals.
Bloomberg reported that the company is seeking to leverage its rich repository of business data by merging it with its recently developed artificial intelligence called "Einstein."
Einstein would serve as an AI tool that would roll out and integrate with the company's existing portfolio of products and services.
The firm hopes that the synergy between the A.I. and its big data will assist its clients in closing business deals and marketing products to customers.
The forthcoming AI upgrade will use machine intelligence to quicken and simplify tasks. An example of this is "Predictive Lead Scoring" which will rank sales leads that has the most potential to turn into a closed deal. Another feature will help customer-service personnel to prioritize responses that had previous communications.
Einstein In Cloud Services
According to Venturebeat, Salesforce will integrate Einstein into the firm's cloud services: Sales Cloud, Service Cloud, Marketing Cloud, Analytics Cloud, App Cloud, Commerce Cloud, Community Cloud, and IoT Cloud.
Einstein was officially announced Sunday highlighting the firm's investment of hundreds of millions of dollars in companies that specialized in artificial intelligence. Salesforce integrated these startups with their in- house research on the software.
A.I for the Common Man and Woman
John Ball, the executive in charge of Einstein, said that Salesforce currently employs 175 data scientists who are all focused on making Einstein both flexible and easy to use.
The company, he added, is dedicated in making artificial intelligence within reach of the common man and woman so that they too can enjoy the benefits of this technology.
Salesforce said that Einstein will not only be available for corporate customers but also for regular individuals who want to use the service to it to create their own applications.
TechCrunch also reported that the firm is building a Salesforce Research unit that will experiment and create new ideas related to deep learning, natural language processing, and computer vision which can further improve Salesforce products.
The unit is helmed by Salesforce chief scientist Richard Socher. He was formerly the cofounder and chief executive of AI startup MetaMind, which Salesforce purchased this year.
