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Applied Artificial Intelligence: An Introduction For Business Leaders

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Selected as a CES 2018 Top Technology Book of the Year"Artificial intelligence" is the buzzword of the day. You've no doubt read your fair share of media hype either proclaiming doom and gloom where robots seize our jobs or prophesying a new utopia where AI cures all our human problems. But what does it actually mean for your role as a business leader?Applied Artificial Intelligence is a practical guide for business leaders who are passionate about leveraging machine intelligence to enhance the productivity of their organizations and the quality of life in their communities. If you want to drive innovation by combining data, technology, design, and people to solve real problems at an enterprise scale, this is your playbook.This book does not overload you with details on debugging TensorFlow code nor bore you with generalizations about the future of humanity. Instead, we teach you how to lead successful AI initiatives by prioritizing the right opportunities, building a diverse team of experts, conducting strategic experiments, and consciously designing your solutions to benefit both your organization and society as a whole. This book is focused on helping you drive concrete business decisions through applications of artificial intelligence and machine learning.Written with the combined knowledge of three experts in the field, Applied Artificial Intelligence is a popular practical guide for business leaders looking to get true value from the adoption of machine learning technology. If you have questions such as...What is artificial intelligence (AI)?How do I distinguish true value from AI hype?What are the best business use cases for AI established so far?How do I identify the best business case for AI adoption and evaluate opportunities?Should I build or buy an AI platform?How do I find and recruit top AI talent for my enterprise?How will incorporating AI into my business increase revenue or decrease costs?How can I facilitate AI adoption within my company? ... then this handbook provides you with answers.Who is this book for?Managers and business professionalsMarketers, product managers and business strategistsEntrepreneurs, founders and startups team membersConsultants, advisors and educatorsEngineers and data scientists who want to work with business unitsAnd everyone else who is interested in using artificial intelligence and machine learning to improve business processes.

201 pages, Kindle Edition

Published June 2, 2018

994 people are currently reading
711 people want to read

About the author

Mariya Yao

6 books5 followers

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5 stars
88 (21%)
4 stars
127 (31%)
3 stars
136 (33%)
2 stars
43 (10%)
1 star
13 (3%)
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
Profile Image for Craig Martin.
3 reviews
June 2, 2019
Managers Overview - not an applied guide

I bought this book to help me get a clearer view of scaling AI in corporate environments. Whilst the authors give a very good holistic view of all the elements needed to consider, I found they tended more towards normal BAU operations, recruitment, funding and project management activities needed to implement AI.

Whilst I acknowledge that these are very important to create the ecosystem needed to drive AI change, I found the advice quite basic 101 eg. Be sure to recruit someone with the right skills as this will have an impact on your outcomes.

Whilst the book was a good attempt I found the result somewhat lacking and left me with a few holes eg. Since agility is such a driving force in organisations, I found the section on delivering AI using agile techniques quite lite. I refer to process agility here not business, structural and strategic agility.

That’s said I don’t think there are too many use cases available (besides companies like Uber’s Michaelangelo, Google etc) that have made a success of thinking through and scaling AI within their organisations in an agile manner. I therefore found the MLaaS section and its surrounding commentary the most valuable.

As more and more use cases become available, and Mariya and Adelyne continue to research, I suspect the next revised version will be much more powerful. This version is a good start.
Profile Image for Kenneth Kinyanjui.
27 reviews8 followers
September 20, 2018
This is a great book and was intended not to be too technical but to help you understand the mechanics of getting an AI initiative in your company.

With the buzzwords floating around and everyone talking about ML/AI as if it is a silver bullet for everything, this book demystifies for business leaders what the critical things are that you need to focus on.

I would recommend this as the read for C-Level, Non-Technical business leaders who are more thought leaders in an organization and would want to go beyond the hype of AI/ML
34 reviews1 follower
December 28, 2018
Why I want to read this book (written before I started reading book) :Key purpose of reading this book is to get tips to manage AI initiatives in firm. I am expecting I should be aware of many things but would like to find gaps in my understanding of AI & gaps in how AI initiatives should be managed

Review: I found book to be quite useful. Though I knew lot of things already but this book has helped put everything in structure.

This can be used as reference book or a starting point when one is starting AI journey. One should try to adapt suggestion given in this book as per corporate culture.
4 reviews
January 20, 2019
Generalized and simplistic

I believe this book would have better utilized as an article on the latest AI companies and applications in different business units. Without going into the practical struggles of implementing AI, the steps proposed here are too simplistic and will benefit no one.
Profile Image for Luke.
73 reviews3 followers
October 27, 2019
A good primer for Applied AI

Finding resources on how to think about AI applied to industry is difficult. So far, this is the only book I've found on the subject. It takes a high level approach to offer a whirlwind tour of the many facets of AI and tries to detail how they may be applied to business.

For the most part, I think the book takes the right approach to this topic and succeeds in its goals.

I found the organization of these often confusingly entangled topics (AI vs ML vs Deep Learning, the Artificial Intelligence Continuum, priorities when it comes to evaluating AI) to be very intuitive and the clear explanations of these areas are excellent.

I wish the book spent more time on the business value of unstructured data and unsupervised learning. The book rightly points out that structured data and supervised learning are most readily applicable to applied AI solutions, but than the lack of those, but discussion ends there. I would have found a discussion on the potential use cases of unsupervised learning to be valuable.

Beyond that I would have been more interesting and informative to have included more and more in-depth examples of the topics discussed. Even for a high-level book, the examples are extremely superficial and often don't illustrate the specifics of the topic at hand. The salient topics of ethics and existential risk are also mentioned here and there but I think separating these into their own chapter and giving them their piece would have been a vast improvement.

Solid 3/5.
Profile Image for Prasanna.
241 reviews17 followers
December 30, 2018
I had the pleasure of reviewing a few chapters before publishing and was glad to see the book get published. This is a really good book and built out of labor of love to explain to business leaders what AI can do to help their business. In the age where it's hard to separate AI facts from hyperboles, this book does a good job of balancing that and provide practical advice to everyone in the corporate ladder. What I liked was there's chapters dedicated to C-Suite and defining the different data related roles in modern AI enterprise along with recruiting strategies enterprises can employ, and the various kinds of errors you need to be aware of.
This is all done without going too deep into the mathematics, and yet without oversimplifying the concepts. If there was one book I'd recommend to a business leader looking to implement AI in their enterprise in 2019, this would be it.
1 review1 follower
November 9, 2019
Artificial Intelligence

AI is beyond the thinking of human nowadays, We are experiencing the next level of sudden changes in modern technologies and innovation. However, The Concept and evaluation are completely based on modern Science, the Correct Data and the logic behind the Art of Writing code/Algorithms to be followed by desired AI tools or "embedded technologies-now-a-days". The "AI Concept" is so wide to explore and apply for our next future Generation and kids in a safe non-destructive manner we wish to Start you Artificial Intelligence (AI) Journey with this great Book: "Artificial Intelligence: A Guide for Thinking Humans"
2 reviews
July 5, 2018
Well-written, concise and clear explanation of AI to non-technical audiences. This is my go-to recommendation for folks who want to learn about machine learning for business but have no mathematical or technical background. If you're looking for more advanced content for engineers and researchers, I would recommend Aurelion Geron's Hands-On Machine Learning with Scikit-Learn & Tensorflow or Francois Chollet's Deep Learning with Python.
1 review
February 2, 2019
Thorough, honest and direct approach to AI

Definitely geared for CEO’s, yet I found myself unable to put it down. A lot of information that is covered so even if you don’t run a company there will be something in there that pertains directly to you. The topics are organized well and broken down into digestible packets. This will enlighten, entertain and demystify anyone interested in A.I. I highly recommend this book to anyone even slightly interested in this topic.
Profile Image for Nadya Tsech.
205 reviews17 followers
May 20, 2019
I had the wrong expectations starting this book. I hoped to find non-trivial use cases, product examples, best practices and guidelines.

Instead, this book arms you with all the necessary buzzwords and a basic understanding of a topic. The big part is about starting an AI initiative in a company: hiring, promoting the idea to the board.

I won't recommend it to people who want to leverage AI and ML in practice.
Profile Image for Devin.
4 reviews1 follower
July 5, 2018
I didn't know much about AI before picking up this book, but I recently joined an AI company and felt I needed to shore up my basic knowledge. I enjoyed how simple the language was in this book and how it introduced concepts in a beginner-friendly yet in-depth way. Recommended if you're not particularly technical and want a business-friendly introduction. (less)
Profile Image for Justin Eyster.
5 reviews
March 27, 2019
Great overview of the state of AI today. As a technical specialist in data analytics, I didn't learn much new information. It was more of a summary of existing knowledge, for me. However, for business leaders without much technical savvy in AI and data analytics, this is a good and accurate summary of high-level information that I would personally recommend.
34 reviews
October 23, 2019
Practical context setting on the basics of AI

Though a bit light on technology, this book is helpful with sound advice on how to define ones AI strategy. It’s biggest value comes from the sample use cases, across core functions of every company, and pointers to companies developing software/solutions to help deploy these use cases.
Profile Image for Anand.
30 reviews2 followers
February 4, 2020
Broad coverage of AI

I would date this book 4 stars considering the coverage it's been able to established. Assuming writer is trying to give starter kit and planting thoughts for business leaders on, how to approach AI also start thinking what would be the implications.overall good book but could have got much better with more examples.
Profile Image for Kristóf Litavecz.
6 reviews
July 21, 2018
Good summary on the current state of AI

I found this book a bit too high level. If you are familiar with the topic, there's very little that you can learn. However overall I find it useful to have a complete overview of the topic
Profile Image for Dorai Thodla.
68 reviews115 followers
September 12, 2018
A must read if you are seriously thinking about building AI applications. It provides a great overview of the technologies and applications and discusses some of the challenges of implementation. Written in a language that is easy to understand it contains many useful ideas.

Profile Image for Renz Abergos.
22 reviews
February 13, 2019
This book is some sort of a guide on how to create an AI team, what people to look for, how to manage them, and how AI should be applied to any industry. It’s a good starter if you’re curious about AI and its application to the society.
Profile Image for James L.
2 reviews
July 30, 2019
Practical application and overview of A.I.

The framework and the latest models used in enterprise applications and industry. The section on technical debt was one of the best explanations offered
5 reviews
August 5, 2019
Great book!

Very interisting book if you want to start with AI in your company. It's not a technical book but a business book but it elaborates the technical details you need to know as a business leader. AI is about solving business problems and adding value for business and society.
3 reviews2 followers
August 14, 2020
This book is written for folks from non-technical backgrounds. As a data analytics professional, it mostly reiterated previous learnings. However, it is a quick and easy read so I'd still recommend it. It will help fill in some gaps and could change how you frame or approach a business problem.
Profile Image for Nilesh Patil.
90 reviews6 followers
November 10, 2020
not engaging, it should have had a different title. It talks about all the basic things that managers needs to do that i believe the majority of the managers know. Nothing that I find is very AI specific. Disappointed!
Profile Image for Jose Luis  Cham.
10 reviews
May 2, 2021
Great content and approach

Super interesting researchers points of view with knowledge and backup data. This is the future..this is the present and we all are part of it, and that's why it is so important to keep up and update our learning about these topics
Profile Image for David.
25 reviews2 followers
July 1, 2018
The book does a nice job of making the topic of AI accessible to nontechnical, business-minded people.
9 reviews
July 5, 2018
Helpful overview when to apply AI for organization + managing it.
Profile Image for Joe Ciuffo.
2 reviews2 followers
November 21, 2018
Good practical handbook. Use in conjunction with deeper reading, and you'll find it's a great foundation!
4 reviews1 follower
January 2, 2019
Good summary

Excelente libro para gente de negocios. Bastante digerible. En una semana se le puede dar vuelta y ver los ejemplos y profundizar más
1 review
January 10, 2019
Awesome book for beginners and business leaders

Great read! It provides great context for any one who wants to understand the basic and build their knowledge ..
Profile Image for Dhananjay Kulkarni.
147 reviews6 followers
January 27, 2019
The reference list (links to 100+ articles and books) is very good though I found the book to be unremarkable.
7 reviews
February 12, 2019
Lightweight

This felt like a high level summary and not what would be needed by an executive who wanted to take action. Good resources on the companion site though.
23 reviews3 followers
March 9, 2019
Great introduction to AI for enterprises

This book is a great building block for anyone interested in AI as a career or interested in deploying it for their business.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews

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