A topic of conversation that’s come up in a number of discussions I’ve had over the last few weeks has been the striking lack of real machine learning commercialisation. With so much hype around the developments in artificial intelligence, most of the smart minds working on it are doing so in a research capacity - through top universities, think-tanks and the like.

This crucial research is paramount and I don’t want to dismiss it. The advancements in algorithms and data structures come directly from the white papers being submitted to journals around the world. It’s a very important piece of the puzzle.

The slow impact of commercialising these models (outside of the major technology firms such as Google, Facebook, etc.) is what I worry about. In order to unlock the potential and make a real impact on the lives of ordinary people, we require savvy business minds to understand the implications of what is possible and to map those accurately to business needs.

I’ve seen hundreds of pitches and demonstrations at this point of companies that claim to use AI - only to discover two or three questions in that they are only using the buzzword for marketing purposes. Often there is no real machine learning in these products.

It is still early, granted, but I want to call for more savvy commercialisation of machine learning models and less publicity-chasing. The opportunities are endless if we stop focusing on branding ourselves as AI companies and instead, actually do the hard work to implement AI into our projects.