As artificial intelligence (AI) and Internet of Things (IoT) become more commonplace, it is both useful and important to understand how these two important trends work together to benefit specialists and the average person alike.
How can AI control and potentially improve the rollout of IoT?
For starters, IoT creates a tremendous amount of data. That data can be captured (enter: big data) and analyzed. But it is not realistic to do this tracking by human effort, given the sheer volume of data. AI will serve an important role in tracking — going through this mountain of IoT data and distilling it into actionable themes. Below are a few examples of how AI and IoT can be strongly synergistic in improving outcomes across areas such as power, health care, system design, and security.
For a good example of how AI can control and combine with IoT for impressive results, consider your home thermostat. Assuming it is connected and therefore an IoT device, what happens if it is an exceptionally hot day and the local power utility is experiencing brownouts? Traditionally, the system would overload, and then the staff of the utility would need to spend time and money to deal with angry customers to restore service.