I’d like to kick off the year by addressing what AI has in store for 2021. And who better to get these insights from than the 3 founders of Dataloop. But, before we get to the year ahead, let’s just recap this past year. We can sum that up with one word: COVID-19. This past year we’ve lived through the coronavirus outbreak, which proved to be a testing and unprecedented time during which the importance of accelerating the development of AI capabilities took center stage.
In fact, during the COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions, technology solutions and the use of artificial intelligence proved extremely lucrative, especially in China. They were the first to surface from the lockdowns with the assistance of innovative technology. In China, they saw autonomous vehicles and smart cities taking precedence amidst restrictions on retail, dining, and everyday life. The opportunity presented itself for increased driverless deliveries and no-contact operations that relied heavily on autonomous driving technologies. China’s police also used fever-detecting goggles to check the temperature of their citizens, Thailand used drones for Covid border surveillance, and drones were used to spray disinfectants over South Korea.
Looking Forward to 2021
And this is only the beginning, in fact, according to an IBM survey, the majority of businesses have already accelerated their digital transformation plans due to the Covid-19 pandemic, and as a result, they’re emerging with new thinking and opportunities for every industry worldwide. The surge of innovation has been noted across all industries. For instance, in the healthcare industry, The National Institutes of Health (NIH) initiated a Medical Imaging and Data Resource Center (MIDRC) using AI and medical imaging in order to diagnose, monitor, and treat Covid-19 patients. AI and ML have helped firefighters and police officers who were responding to emergency situations, and the list goes on.
So what else does 2021 have in store for the AI market? This is where I’m going to let our trio of founders at Dataloop share their thoughts…
Nir Buschi, Co-founder and Chief Business Officer at Dataloop says: Early enterprises who pioneered and built their own internal AI tooling will reserve them, and transition to buying a more commercial platform in 2021 as data management grows and becomes ubiquitous.
Eran Shlomo, Co-founder, and CEO at Dataloop says: In 2021, AI limitations will surface into public attention where AI bias, explainability, and fairness will gain more attention as AI starts to impact more areas in our lives. With these issues challenging the transition of AI to production, both on the functional side as well as the financial aspects the need for efficient, highly automated human supervision and monitoring, deeply integrated into the AI-powered product and their usage will become extremely clear.
Avi Yashar, Co-founder and Chief Product Officer at Dataloop says: Quality Quality Quality! In 2021, for AI solutions QUALITY will be a core component in training data in order to enable such production solutions.
Final Thoughts
Though many would agree that 2020 was, to say the least, a tough year for all, if we can at least take something positive from this pandemic, it will be a miracle. Our founders of Dataloop seem to have high expectations for 2021, as do many other businesses. So here’s to a more positive year than 2020, and may we all reach our own expectations for 2021!
