"Artificial Intelligence is here to stay" - but we're just getting started

During the presentations, the word in the audience was Magic fallen several times: AI is science fiction for many, but it has almost imperceptibly conquered various areas of life. The advertising industry, however, is just at the beginning, Adello Country Manager Sandor Laczko pointed out in his introduction. While the Unicorns in Silicon Valley have made AI a leading topic, Adello is so far the only Swiss company in its sector to rely on this technology. Machine learning has only just become possible thanks to increasing data volumes and computing power, he said. Laczko emphasized that, in addition to algorithms, ethical and security aspects must always be kept in mind.

Oliver Schönfeld, Managing Director of PHD, also confirms that we are only at the beginning. In his presentation "Merge - The closing gap between technology and us," he shows how human and artificial intelligence are increasingly merging. The peak will be reached in the next 30 years, he said, but the acceleration will be incremental. "More than 50 percent of all European companies today still know little or nothing about machine and deep learning." At the same time, he said, it's especially important in the marketing space to embrace new technologies and see AI as a brand-building tool. "Whoever has the best algorithm wins".

This is also the approach taken by the Zurich city police in the fight against crime. Dominik Balogh, head of analysis and development at the Zurich city police, dryly said that the other side sometimes still has an advantage when it comes to AI. The city police use "Precobs" to identify patterns in burglaries. Based on data from previous crimes, the system calculates in which areas and time periods there is an increased risk of house break-ins, which are then prevented by increased police presence and controls. In the past four years, near-repeat burglaries have been reduced from 60% to 54%. He denied that police officers would soon no longer be needed. The fight against crime still often requires information that only a human brain can put together.

Christof Zogg is responsible for digital business, marketing and advertising at SBB and is working to transform the SBB app - the Swiss platform with the most installs - into a "personal travel companion. The app is designed to take verbal commands, and in all Swiss dialects. The price is the collection of a comprehensive data trail, to which the user must consent.

Alibaba has the right tools ready for the upcoming AI revolution. In his first presentation in Switzerland, Ye Huang, Cloud Architect at Alibaba, showed that the Chinese company, known in this country primarily as a trading platform, is also the world's leading public cloud provider. It enables companies to use a strong, ready-to-use infrastructure and devote the energy to building intelligent applications for it. Last but not least, they also offer a solution for in-house DSP, SSP and DMP.

In the subsequent panel, the challenges and limitations of AI were discussed. While the question of privacy was burning under the nails of the audience, the experts confirmed that transparency was a key requirement in the application of AI. "Earn the trust," was Zogg's motto. According to Adello CEO Mark Forster, the ability to build a powerful infrastructure and then leverage the relevant data is at the heart of the matter. But most companies today are not yet in a position to scale to a sufficient extent. And: AI is first and foremost a tool that should be used for many applications and continuously developed - no one knows today where we will be in a few years. What is clear, however, are good ideas - and data scientists.

On January 18, 2018, the next Mobile professional event will be held on the topic "Are you ready for GDPR?"