Silicon Valley has hyped modern artificial intelligence technologies to the stratosphere, thanks to AI’s ability to automate data management and boost analytics processes for mining business data. Yet any healthily skeptical individual would expect the actual goods to fall short, and debates continue over AI’s actual potential to overtake humans reasoning  capacity. Some estimate that AI-driven analytics projects are failing at a rate of 85 percent. Is the coming wave of AI technology anything to get excited about one way or the other?

At the IBM CDO Summit in Boston, Massachusetts, it “was all about AI, and they’re not talking trash anymore,” said Paul Gillin (@pgillin), co-host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio. “This stuff is really going to work.”

We’re seeing the skills bar for building powerful AI applications come down, according to Gillin. They will churn out a plethora of software applications that change the way people work.

Gillin and co-host Rebecca Knight (@knightrm) spoke during the IBM CDO Summit in Boston, Massachusetts. They discussed the quickening pulse of AI technology and the expanding role of the chief data officer. (* Disclosure below.)

CDO invasion

Is every AI product coming out right now worth a go? Of course not. Many people are blundering their AI efforts as we speak, according to Gillin.

“I think we’ll see a lot of stupid applications of AI, but that’s always the way new technology is,” Gillin said. But the technology has advanced to an impressive degree, and people are learning more every day about how to wield it, he said.

Human skills are an increasingly key part of the picture. Inderpal Bhandari, global chief data officer of IBM, spoke to theCUBE about his recipe for success in enterprise AI. “Data science was not really on his list,” Knight noted. He stressed the need for siloed departments in the organization to align to a greater cause.

The role of the CDO has evolved rapidly over the past few years. Five years ago, “we were asking questions like, ‘does this job have a future?'” Gillin said.

Today, the situation is quite different. “There is a lot of unanimity of opinion — this position is important; it’s critical. Ninety percent of large organizations will have a CDO within the next couple of years,” Gillin concluded.

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

Photo: IBM