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AI, driven from the top

Electronics Sourcing’s managing editor, Jon Barrett

Starting page 21 of January’s issue, Edgewater Research Company’s Dennis Reed walks readers through the latest market research, including sector analysis across compute, automotive and industrial. As I expected, the research includes many references to artificial intelligence with one section saying: ‘We are forecasting outperformance in memory and logic, projecting plus 25 per cent and 10 per cent growth respectively driven by continued AI buildouts’.

 

When I discuss the long term expectations of AI with friends, family, industry and academia, the range of opinions is unfathomably wide. At one end of the scale, some are worried about swarms of killer robots, cybercrime and unemployment. At the other end of the scale people imagine AI ushering in a three day working week and solving climate change.

 

As always, I expect reality to be somewhere in the middle. For example, I have been staggered by some of my own AI experiments based around reverse engineering printed circuit assemblies I’m repairing.

 

For many years, governments around the world have been pouring grant funding into AI research. However, things are now changing. Instead of just helping fund research, governments are now making plans to deploy AI in their own operations. If this ‘drive from the top’ does take place at scale it will provide a level of acceptance and underpinning for the rest of industry.

 

I’ve not been too impressed by some of the public sector applications but I imagine those in education and healthcare will be early wins. Fingers crossed for AI from here.