AI & machine learning sector – market growth & heightened competition

Machine learning “here to stay” as competition intensifies

The Interview – which started with an overview of the AI and ML operating environment – included a comprehensive look at key AI and ML trends, the competition between cloud providers and third-party vendors, as well as the future development of the industry.

During the Interview, the specialist identified three key trends related to ML, namely that ML “will be here for a very long time”. They also noted that as the technology develops, it will be incorporated into more software and consumer applications, from “going to the doctor and interacting with e-commerce, [to] interacting with utilities to maintain things around the house”. The final trend mentioned was that enterprises will use ML as a service to “a much higher degree than they do today”, something the specialist said will coincide with ML receiving a higher proportion of spending from a company’s IT budget.

The growing value of ML is creating a “fascinating market”, according to the specialist, with a number of small cloud providers and third-party vendors sharing the space with bigger players such as Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure. However, the specialist noted that despite the size of the “big three”, none are likely to secure a monopoly in the market any time soon. Customers are still reluctant to put all their data in one basket, the specialist said, particularly after an incident involving Oracle Cloud spread “a lot of fear” regarding the use of a single vendor. 

While the ML space currently consists of big and small players, the specialist believes that will change over the next 3-5 years as the larger cloud providers pursue “a more aggressive strategy”, leaving themselves and smaller, “super specialised” vendors, like C3.ai and Palantir.

In the future, the specialist expects ML technology to become “much more customisable… and deployed much easier,” potentially reaching market maturity in the next 5-7 years. But no matter the speed of this maturity, the specialist concluded that we are “just at the beginning” of what ML can do, both for businesses and society in general. 

To access all the human insights in Third Bridge Forum’s AI & Machine Learning Sector – Market Growth & Heightened Competition Interview, click here to view the full transcript.