Your Business Could Use AI!

As we mentioned before, Middle had the opportunity earlier this fall to attend C2 Montreal, which hosted the AI ecosystem organized by Scale AI. It brought together companies and people who have successfully developed products and services based on artificial intelligence. 

C2 Montreal, the Showcase of Quebec’s AI

During these conferences and events on artificial intelligence, it was reiterated that the city of Montreal is an important pole in the development and learning of artificial intelligence. Many companies, both established and in development, and especially many inspiring people who are passionate about artificial intelligence were at C2. 

Middle is fortunate to work with many partners who are leveraging artificial intelligence, as well as counting among its clients Explor.ai, an artificial intelligence company that also attended the C2 AI event in the person of Rémi Dion. Rémi was kind enough to answer a few questions for this article. 

Interview With Rémi From Explor.ai 

Can you explain in a few words what Explor.ai is all about and the solutions you offer to your customers? 

The myth that AI is too complex, expensive and requires mountains of data means that this technology is too often dismissed.

Explor.ai was born out of the need for AI for the average Quebec business, whether it’s in manufacturing, sales, biotech, waste management, agri-food or construction. SMEs that meet real Quebec needs and that juggle with data in their daily operations. What we offer is to explore the potential of AI for the business reality of each of our customers and to materialize it thanks to the expertise of our team. There are many programs and grants available to fund such exploratory projects, so we have also developed in-house expertise to help our clients navigate these. 

We have been fortunate to see, thanks to C2, that artificial intelligence is developing in many fields. Do you think every field will eventually find an ally in artificial intelligence? 

Absolutely. AI is destined to become commonplace and to operate as an undercurrent of the many digital applications that already surround us. The major families of solutions have already received strong winds of change. These include language models that capture the semantics (meaning) of a sentence and entire paragraphs in multiple languages. Or image segmentation models that detect and localize objects. In recent months, we have entered a generative phase that allows us to produce images, sound and text that appear realistic. Thanks to these advances, the task is now to combine these powerful tools in relevant applications. These fundamental blocks now allow us to assemble solutions dedicated to specific problems in each domain.  

What do you envision for the future of artificial intelligence in the short and medium-term, both in terms of its applications and the know-how of people working in this field?

AI is set to take a growing place in all industries. Its development and integration into usual processes will be commonplace. The know-how to not only produce a model, but also to monitor and maintain it will be essential and widespread. Teams will grow in diversity – including expertise that is not only technical – and the focus will be more on explainability, i.e. visualization tools to understand the impact of inputs on the result.  

Middle is a digital marketing agency. How could artificial intelligence be useful for us and our clients? 

As long as we want to process information that influences each other, it can become difficult for a human to extract useful shortcuts, to see trends or the relationship between two or more points. It is in these cases that AI becomes powerful, it highlights the salient facts, groups the points based on their similarity. 

A simple example of this kind of application: you send a newsletter that points to your website. The browser flow will certainly be affected, but is it the newsletter or the fact that it’s a Monday that will have the most impact? The anticipated flow can be predicted and the deviation from what has been observed can be associated with the newsletter. 

Another example would be to model the different players in an industry based on their contacts on LinkedIn and other social media to identify influencers for an industry and a typical persona. These influencers are not necessarily those with the largest audience, but the largest audience for your target market.  

Artificial Intelligence: the Future for All Fields

The experts at C2 Montreal are unanimous: in a few years, artificial intelligence will have made its mark in many fields. Louis Têtu of Coveo stated that “in a few years, you will either be working with artificial intelligence or competing with someone who is using it.” 

Turning to artificial intelligence is then essential to consider for your growth and development. 

Artificial intelligence has a promising future, both technologically and socially. Indeed, artificial intelligence requires skills, know-how and especially people, which makes it a field that creates jobs and innovative solutions that can make life easier. 

“The field of AI development will evolve, become more marked out, accessible and inclusive.” – Remi Dion, Explor.ai.

Ultimately, while artificial intelligence is becoming more and more developed and powerful, we are still in its infancy. Whatever the field, in the future we will all find an ally in artificial intelligence. The future looks innovative, connected and intelligent.