It takes a lot of companies collaborating in a lot of new and different ways behind the scenes to make AI work seamlessly on the front lines. We see this all the time in our work on AI. Processing power is one of the most obvious examples – when clients use SAS AI capabilities at scale, they’re going to need massive processing power in order to make it work, which is why they expect us to have worked closely with Intel well in advance to make sure our solutions are tightly aligned with their latest processors.

So I was thrilled recently to participate in Intel’s “Coffee Chat” series to discuss how to enable the AI ecosystem, with a special focus on real-world applications. I was joined by Accenture’s Jean-Luc Chatelain, CTO of Accenture Applied Intelligence, and moderator Pete Baker, VP and General Manager for Compute Ecosystem Engineering at Intel.

Jean-Luc discussed the deployment of the next generation of chatbots as part of ACE – Accenture Customer Experience.  In order to use natural language processing to quickly and accurately understand client questions, these chatbot systems need to handle massive workloads – fast.

As Jean-Luc said in our discussion, “Speed is a KPI of business delivery.” With chatbots in particular, it’s easy to see how even a slight delay in response time can have an outsized negative effect on customer interactions.  Jean-Luc shared a number of specific insights into how Accenture is applying the latest technology advances to deliver on these demands for clients.

With chatbots in particular, it’s easy to see how even a slight delay in response time can have an outsized negative effect on customer interactions. Click To Tweet

Meanwhile, I shared SAS’ experiences with two significant AI deployments:

• Helping the health care benefits manager Prime Therapeutics take on fraud, waste, and abuse
• Optimizing Volvo Trucks’ massive IoT-enabled maintenance strategy, in which hundreds of thousands of its trucks are constantly monitored for maintenance needs.

AI plays a huge role in both – and requires a lot of behind-the-scenes coordination in order to deliver on both companies’ aggressive goals.

As you can see, we packed a lot into 20 minutes. If you’re responsible for any aspect of AI strategy or execution, this short panel discussion is well worth your time. Just click “play.”