On September 23, PassiveLogic Engineer Clark Dobson served as an expert on a panel at the ai4i (Artificial Intelligence For Industries) Conference, which is co-sponsored by the IEEE Computer Society. The session addressed the topic “Applications of AI in Industry” and covered a wide range of topics, including expected economic potential of AI to the global economy, current trends in AI, application success stories, limitations of AI, and the future outlook of AI in industry.

As part of the discussion on future directions, there was enthusiastic agreement on the panel that the “cookbook” approach to AI and deep learning which is prevalent among many industrial practitioners today will probably not lead to significant breakthroughs or innovations in the long term. Rather, more sophisticated and application-specific models, coupled with more creative solution algorithms and techniques, are the way forward. The approach PassiveLogic is taking for autonomous buildings clearly follows this mode of thinking, and positions us as leaders in the field.