Artificial intelligence (AI) is an exciting technology that seems to be seeing fresh breakthroughs every other day. While starting a career in AI will enable you to spend your days working with some of the most talented developers around for a great salary, it can also be highly competitive and involve a lot of behind-the-scenes work keeping yourself updated on the latest artificial intelligence software.
However, the effort you put into keeping yourself ahead of the curve is likely to pay off in the form of a lucrative salary. As a machine learning engineer, you can expect to earn from $125,000 to $175,000, while some of the biggest tech companies out there are attracting talented young graduates with offers that range between $300,000 and $500,000.
To put it simply, tech firms are proactively searching for top AI talent and ready to pay big money for the best candidates. Make sure you put yourself at the top of recruitment shortlists by mastering the artificial intelligence software that companies are most likely to be looking for.
Artificial Intelligence Software Trends In 2020
Before we take a look at the best artificial intelligence software, let’s kick off by taking a quick look at AI and what it actually means.
Mastering the variety of artificial intelligence software on offer at the moment will help you boost your career, but first, let’s take a moment to refresh our memories about the basics of artificial intelligence and what makes it the most exciting technology around.
Future AI Development
The artificial intelligence software that’s currently on the market is the result of years of philosophical and technological research. Artificial intelligence is, to put it simply, a whole area of thinking that involves teaching machines to reason like humans. While the concept has been around for centuries, it’s over the past one hundred years than it has left the realm of science fiction, notably thanks to the emergence of the Internet and a huge boost in available computer power.
Machine learning, a subset of artificial intelligence, makes decisions in a human-like manner by using algorithms to analyse data and is the technology behind many of the programs we use on a day-to-day basis. Music and video streaming, Internet of Things devices and ecommerce platforms such as Amazon are just some of the services that work thanks to machine learning.
In 2020, more and more companies are going through their digital transformation process – Garter goes as far as to predict that 2.3 billion artificial intelligence jobs will be created by the beginning of next year. Alongside this exponential growth comes an uptick in the amount of companies seeking skilled professionals able to master cutting edge AI programs.
Top 10 Artificial Intelligence Software To Master In 2020
Whether or not customers are aware of it, artificial intelligence is becoming a business software staple. Many business applications come with built-in AI and machine learning that enable them to provide strategic insights or automate repetitive tasks with little added value. It’s important to distinguish, however, between software that is empowered with artificial intelligence and that which is used to create AI applications.
With no further ado, let’s take a look at the best AI software to take your career forward in 2020.
1. Google Cloud AI Platform
It should come as no surprise that we’re kicking off this artificial intelligence software list with a Google product. Developers can use the Google Cloud AI Platform to train, host, deploy and share machine learning models. It’s an efficient and cost-effective tool that enables AI professionals to take their projects from ideation to deployment and also has the advantage of being compatible with a variety of other tools and APIs.
2. Azure Machine Learning Studio
Azure Machine Learning Studio empowers companies to create their own AI applications with minimal coding knowledge. It simplifies the whole data science work process. While it’s an extremely simple solution, Azure still requires some statistical knowledge and basic programming skills. While not strictly required, it will do much to improve the user experience.
3. IBM Watson Studio
IBM Watson Studio is a data science and ML platform that enables businesses to experiment, train and deploy models, and scale data science projects. Truly free artificial intelligence software is hard to come by. But, Watson Studio is available in a variety of deployment options (Watson Studio Cloud, Watson Studio Desktop and Watson Studio Local) under several different pricing plans and includes both free “Lite” and trial options.
4. TensorFlow
Probably the most famous deep learning library around, TensorFlow is one of those tools that make implementing machine learning models a whole lot easier than it used to be. It was developed by the Google Brain team as an open-source platform for machine learning and research into deep neural networks. You can use TensorFlow to train and implement deep neural networks for a variety of different purposes. This includes image recognition, recurrent neural networks, sequence-to-sequence models, NLP and simulations based on partial differential equations. If you’re intending to launch a career in AI, you must get acquainted with TensorFlow.
5. PyTorch
PyTorch is another open source machine learning library that shares many features with TensorFlow. The main difference between the two is that Pytorch is more adapted for short term projects. TensorFlow, on the other hand, enables you to manage more complex workflows. It is also the brainchild of a major tech heavyweight, but this time by the Facebook AI research group. PyTorch launched in January 2016.
6. Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit
Formerly known as CNTK and sometimes as “The Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit”, Microsoft Cognitive Toolkit was developed by Microsoft Research. It describes dataflow using a graph structure but is mostly employed to create deep neural networks. It’s not quite as easy to master as TensorFlow but tends to be somewhat faster.
7. Apache MXNet
Apache MXNet is used to train and deploy deep neural networks. It is used by Amazon as the first deep learning framework on Amazon Web Services. It has the advantages of being scalable and supporting a flexible programming model. A wide range of language APIs such as Python, Go, C++, Perl, Scala, R and JavaScript are also supported. Added to this, it is highly portable and supports the deployment of trained models to mobile and Internet of Things-enabled devices.
8. Salesforce Einstein
Here we take a look at a piece of software that’s slightly more business-oriented. Salesforce is known for its cloud-based customer relationship management (CRM) software. Salesforce is well worth having as it makes it easy to extract insights from data. There are also other AI-enabled features such as voice recognition.
9. Wipro HOLMES
Wipro HOLMES isn’t as well known as some others on this list. But it’s worth having around for its strong automation capabilities. The software can streamline tasks such as service requests, contract intelligence, fraud detection and IT monitoring. It is aimed at particular niche markets, such as banking, telecommunications and retail.
10. Amazon SageMaker
We consider Amazon Web Services to be one of the best providers out there today. As well as great storage, AWS offers a range of cloud-based artificial intelligence software. The company likes to claim that their pre-installed algorithms perform ten times better than the competition. And one thing is for sure. It contains so many pre-installed features makes it cheaper than many other providers out there.
