From asking Siri to suggest a nearby restaurant to programming a drone flight on Mars, artificial intelligence (AI) has become a part of everyday life—and its presence and influence will inevitably grow.

What do manufacturers need to know about it?

First of all, it’s already here. Capgemini Research Institute reports that more than half of European manufacturers (51%) use AI, followed by Japan (30%) and the United States (28%). So far, the most popular applications are for maintenance (29% of the examples cited) and quality control (27%).

What is AI, and what can it do for you?

Without debating the philosophical meaning of “intelligence,” examples of AI capabilities include speech (“Hey, Siri!”), image and video recognition (simple as bar codes, as complex as facial recognition), autonomous creations (robots, self-driving cars), language processing (Rosetta), and analytics and predictions gained through AI’s ability to “learn.”

Just consider the two popular applications already mentioned above—maintenance and quality control.

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