<p>This article is one of a series on the subject of Artificial Intelligence in mainstream enterprise computing.</p><p>Leaders and managers of businesses, non-profit organizations, government agencies and others have something in common. They have organizational goals and organizational stakeholders. Whether those stakeholders are owners, customers, social service clients, or citizen constituents, the organizational goals must align in whole or in part with solving a problem or creating something of value for stakeholders. Ultimately, as AI becomes widely adopted, everyone stands to benefit. We are all consumers, citizens, and owners. We are all stakeholders.</p><p>Here again some definitions are necessary. By “enterprise systems”, we mean solutions built of software applications, data, and supporting technologies which enable an organization to achieve its distinct goals and create value for its stakeholders. But we also include in this definition of system, the humans who use the system, the humans who derive some benefit from it, and the policies and operating procedures which govern the use of the technical solution. By “mainstream”, we mean those solutions that are widely adopted or that have the potential for wide adoption yielding transformed operational processes across industry sectors.</p><ul><li>The field of artificial intelligence (AI) is finally yielding valuable smart devices and applications that do more than win games against human champions. According to a report from the Frederick S. Pardee Center for International Futures at the University of Denver, the products of AI are changing the competitive landscape in several industry sectors and are poised to upend operations in many business functions« (Kiron, 2017).</li></ul><p>It is tempting to omit computer games from this discussion. We might not think that they create real value for the stakeholders. But the consumers who pay for them clearly find value in them as a form of entertainment. Further, the broad genre of computer applications, games and simulations, which incorporate advanced AI technologies, create stakeholder value as training and development platforms. One need to look no further than commercial flight simulators which allow students and pilots of all levels of experience to train and learn without the risk of making inappropriate contact with the ground in a real aircraft with real people aboard.</p><p>For over half a century, enterprises of all kinds have adopted successive generations of information technology to create stakeholder value by increasing sales, reducing costs, producing widgets, or delivering services faster and more reliably. Organizations of all sizes today use a computer of some kind to house their Systems of Record – a system for the collection and management of transactional information, for operational needs and management reporting. Some organizations find ways to achieve competitive advantage through clever uses of Information Technology, often doing the same thing as their competitors, just doing it faster or cheaper. We can call this a System of Differentiation. A few companies change the marketplace through Systems of Innovation – innovative applications of Information Technology. A leading Information Technology research firm introduced this three-layer model in 2012, referring to it as “Pace Layered Application Strategy” (Gartner, 2012) because each layer promises to drive organizational change and accelerate value creation at a different pace.</p><p>The most well-known example of Systems of Innovation is an entire enterprise – Amazon.com. Beginning as an online bookseller, Amazon innovated so profoundly that they almost single-handedly killed brick and mortar bookstores. It is telling that they are not known as Amazon, Incorporated, or the Amazon Company. They are known by their Internet domain name. Today, their technology innovations have not only transformed how households and business acquire all manner of goods, their technology itself has become a market-disruptive service in the form of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Further, AWS, along with Microsoft Azure, IBM Watson, and others are now commoditizing elements of their AI infrastructure providing an unprecedented opportunity for enterprises which are not among the “tech giants’ to employ these technologies in their pursuit of stakeholder value.</p><p>Table 1 lists a sample of the AI services provided by AI that enterprises can integrate into their systems. According to Amazon, “you get instant access to fast, high quality AI tools based on the same technology used to power Amazon’s own businesses.” (AWS, 2021)</p><p><strong>Table 1: Sample AWS AI Services (source: AWS, 2021)</strong></p><table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8"><thead><tr><th>Service Name</th><th>Service Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Amazon CodeGuru</td><td>Automate code reviews to improve software quality</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Comprehend</td><td>Discover insights and relationships in text</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Fraud Detector</td><td>Detect online fraud faster</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Lex</td><td>Build voice and text chatbots</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Polly</td><td>Turn text into lifelike speech</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Recognition</td><td>Analyze image and video</td></tr><tr><td>Amazon Transcribe</td><td>Automatic speech recognition</td></tr></tbody></table><p>Table 2 lists some of Microsoft’s AI services provide under a product line called Azure Cognitive Services.</p><p><strong>Table 2: Sample Microsoft AI Services (Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services, 2021)</strong></p><table border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="8"><thead><tr><th>Service Name</th><th>Service Description</th></tr></thead><tbody><tr><td>Content Moderator</td><td>Detect potentially offensive or unwanted content</td></tr><tr><td>Text Analytics</td><td>Detect sentiment, key phrases, and named entities</td></tr><tr><td>Translator</td><td>Detect and translate more than 60 supported languages</td></tr><tr><td>Speaker Recognition</td><td>Identify and verify the people speaking based on audio</td></tr><tr><td>Computer Vision</td><td>Analyze content images</td></tr><tr><td>Face</td><td>Detect and identify people and emotions in images</td></tr><tr><td>Video Indexer</td><td>Analyze the visual and audio channels of a video, and index its content</td></tr></tbody></table>