Artificial intelligence is going mainstream; more and more businesses are trying to juice a competitive advantage from novel AI tech. The need to cram terabytes or petabytes of data into algorithms for real-time insight is asking 110 percent of techies’ brain power. Massively parallel computing with graphics processing units might push AI further into everyday business transactions, according to Rob Ober (pictured, right), Tesla chief platform architect at Nvidia Corp.

AI and deep learning are turning computer science on its head, according to Ober. “The change in state of art is literally month by month right now,” he said. Instead of explicit programming, implicit programming based on data fed to AI systems is changing everything. The lightning-fast learning and insight generation from such systems is applicable in practically all businesses, he added.

Ober and Matt Burr (pictured, left), general manager of FlashBlade at Pure Storage Inc., spoke with Dave Vellante (@dvellante) and Lisa Martin (@LuccaZara), co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the Pure Storage Accelerate event in San Francisco. They discussed trends in AI technology innovation and live business use cases. (* Disclosure below.)

Low-hanging fruit for AI in retail, customer service

Pure recently released AIRI — turnkey storage solution with built-in Nvidia DGX-1 supercomputers featuring Nvidia Tesla V100 GPUs. The software layer — Nvidia GPU Cloud deep learning stack and Pure Storage AIRI Scaling Toolkit — makes it a compact all-in-one AI machine for customers, Ober described. It just released AIRI Mini. “It’s an AI super computer in a half-rack,” he said.

AI will inevitably disrupt healthcare, retail and transportation and a host of other domains. Will it end corporeal-world shopping as we know it? Burr doesn’t think so — after all, who is going to order and return 10 pairs of shoes on Amazon.com until they find a fit? But it could cut out some long-standing annoyances.

“Where I think retail will improve is understanding that I’m on my way to their store and improving the experience once I get there,” Burr said. “I’d like to see standing in line go away.”

Customer service call centers also beg for an AI cleanup. Voice and intonation analysis and data analytics on callers could help employees speed up service and resolutions, Burr concluded.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the Pure Storage Accelerate event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Pure Storage Accelerate 2018. Neither Pure Storage Inc., the event sponsor, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE