Industrial Intelligence: AI’s Implications on Security, Seamlessness and Services for the IIoT
Services
processes or plants, but to monitor stock
levels, supply chains, and market forces. In
agriculture, AI can identify optimal planting
locations, watering schedules, and harvest
timing.
In the context of smart things, Artificial
Intelligence is what allows devices to evolve.
Physical objects ship with one manifestation;
malleable, adaptive software can allow
these goods to remain relevant over the long
haul. AI allows software to remain secure
and useful, improving with age as opposed
to becoming deprecated when the world
continues to evolve.
Because AI is rational and data-informed, it
can become an unbiased, trusted advisor,
removing human subjectivity and improving
practitioners’ confidence in decisions. Those
organizations adopting AI will have
significant competitive advantages, more
resilience to turbulent markets, improved
operational efficiency and will work towards
a vision of zero downtime, zero waste, zero
accidents, and zero missed opportunities.
In addition to allowing devices a modicum of
self-awareness, Artificial Intelligence itself
can become a valuable service. We observe
from the automotive industry that
autonomy stemming from advances in
artificial intelligence can fundamentally
change how people view vehicles –
transitioning them from single-purchase,
durable goods to shared mobility services.
Outside the obvious uses for artificial
intelligence and connectivity in enabling
these vehicles’ scheduling and operation,
the same technology can be used to create
smart, self-diagnosing vehicles that shift
maintenance from responsive to proactive.
Eventually, AI may be used to not only detect
faults, but to create self-healing vehicles.
A R OADMAP T OWARDS C OGNITION IN
THE I O T
As AI continues to improve and IoT scales up,
the marriage between the two will become
increasingly valuable to industry. Improved
security,
seamless
and
pervasive
implementation,
and
outcome-based
applications will become transformative
across verticals. The resulting better-
designed systems taking security, data
privacy and ownership, interoperability, and
resilience into account will ensure a bright
future for all connected devices and services,
so businesses can reap the benefits of
accepting good technologies into their
industries.
Already, artificial intelligence has been used
to learn “fingerprints” for characteristic
faults and maintenance needs in vehicles. 4
Other industrial processes can be similarly
monitored, to identify the optimal time for
tool replacement, or to correlate production
issues with particular machine tools or
operators. Connectivity at scale allows these
analytics to monitor not just individual
4
At the end of the day, AI’s continued use will
make IoT safer and more effective leading to
a grand vision where the default question
Let Your Car Tell You What It Needs: http://news.mit.edu/2017/software-let-your-car-tell-you-what-it-needs-1026
IIC Journal of Innovation
- 25 -