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AI Eats the World

 Artificial intelligence (AI) has catered for an immense leap in development

in business practice. AI is also increasingly addressing administrative, dispos-

itive and planning processes in marketing, sales and management on the way

to the holistic algorithmic enterprise. This introductory chapter deals with

the motivation for and background behind the book: It is meant to build a

bridge from AI technology and methodology to clear business scenarios and

added values. It is to be considered as a transmission belt that translates the

informatics into business language in the spirit of potentials and limitations.

At the same time, technologies and methods in the scope of the chapters


on the basics are explained in such a way that they are accessible even with-

out having studied informatics—the book is regarded as a book for business

practice.

AI and the Fourth Industrial Revolution

If big data is the new oil, analytics is the combustion engine (Gartner 2015).

Data is only of benefit to business if it is used accordingly and capitalised.

Analytics and AI increasingly enable the smart use of data and the associated

automation and optimisation of functions and processes to gain advantages

in efficiency and competition.

AI is not another industrial revolution. This is a new step on the path of

the universe. The last time we had a step of that significance was 3.5 billion

years ago with the invention of life.

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