Vidiemme participated in the final conference of the Artificial Intelligence Observatory at Milan Polytechnic.
The event, entitled Artificial Intelligence: on your marks!, saw the participation of Vidiemme for the second consecutive year both as partner and round table participant. The latter was held by Serena Spalla, BU Director of getAI!, the Business Unit born just last year shortly before the first conference dedicated to this topic.
Research results
The picture that emerges is that of a dynamic but still immature market. If on the one hand in Italy companies talk a lot about Artificial Intelligence, showing a certain interest, on the other hand they still have a knowledge gap to be filled.
45% of the subjects involved in the survey said they had not yet adopted an AI solution. They are however equipped with infrastructure to collect data but these are not yet of quality and therefore they are incapable of bringing true added value.
For example, AI is very often seen as a replica of human intelligence or only as a Virtual Assistant. Companies do not take into consideration other fundamental factors like the importance of having clean data to implement solutions that use this technology.
Only 12% of companies have already implemented an Artificial Intelligence solution and 68% have done so with a satisfactory and useful result. The most common implementations mainly concern data processing, chatbot and image processing.
The sectors in which instead these solutions are most widespread are financial and banking, Retail and finally Telco.
Vidiemme’s approach
The data presented by the Artificial Intelligence Observatory are in line with what Vidiemme is doing.
Serena Spalla explained this approach. She is Business Unit Director of getAI!, the team within the company that is dedicated to the development of Artificial Intelligence and Conversational Interface solutions.
Many clients have the same problem: the desire to implement an AI solution without knowing how. That’s where Vidiemme comes into play, helping them to identify the best solution based on their goals and the strategic and competitive advantage they want to obtain.
The vertical focus on the Retail market also confirms that Vidiemme is operating in the right area. To this must be added the HR market and Pharma & Healthcare, with the development of solutions like Takeda LeggoXTe, and Virtual Caregivers to support patients with a specific pathology.
In addition to these verticalizations, Vidiemme implements Artificial Intelligence solutions even in areas that cut across many sectors, such as Customer Care.
Vidiemme’s choice to focus intensely on solutions such as Chatbot and Conversational Interfaces, with a specific focus on Voice, is proving to be in line with what was described by the Observatory results. Hence the attention on the theme of NLP, with a dedicated team that has enabled an internal tool for dialogue design.
Thanks to its extensive know-how, Vidiemme is able to create the best interaction flow and to implement these conversational solutions faster. All this is obviously to the Client’s benefit.
The Flexa platform
The presentation by Federico Frattini of Flexa took place during the Final Conference.
This digital platform, developed by Vidiemme in partnership with MIP and dedicated to Alumni and students of Milan Polytechnic, was created using the potential of Artificial Intelligence.
Flexa will be completely online by the summer and will represent one single platform in Italy able to accompany students and professionals in their training.
A final figure which emerged from the Artificial Intelligence Observatory: this technology drove an estimated market of 85 million euros in 2018.
As underlined by Serena Spalla during her speech, it is expected that we will soon see the democratization of AI thanks to the diffusion of consumer products. Google’s and Amazon’s Smart Speakers will grow and expand this business even faster in the months to come.
Artificial Intelligence is also already having meaningful impact on different aspects of social life and also on the legislative aspects of each country. An interesting and optimistic fact that emerges is that AI will not steal jobs, but will automate precise tasks.
In fact, it must be considered that in 2030 the percentage of workers in Italy will decrease from 23.3 million to 21.9 million. The demographic decline that has occurred in recent decades will therefore lead to a decrease in the workforce and an increase in retired people. Within this framework, AI is not a threat but a necessity, an opportunity to maintain a situation of balance between supply and demand in the world of employment. However, there will remain a gap of 1.1 million jobs without enough workers to do them.