Alvaro Soto is director of product management and design at Figure Eight, the essential human-in-the-loop AI platform for data science and machine learning teams. Before joining Figure Eight, Alvaro was the Design Principal for IBM Watson where he led the design for products such as Watson Assistant and Watson Studio. Alvaro is adjunct faculty at Texas State University where he teaches entrepreneurship, futurism, and AI strategy in the graduate program of communication design. He speaks regularly about building AI for the real world and the role of design in making AI possible for everyone.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) can be a hype but it can also transform the way we live and interact with each other. For the past 5 years, we have seen enormous advancements in machine learning techniques and computation that have given rise to one of the most significant advancements in the current knowledge economy. Naturally, like most emergent technologies, its incubation period has been dominated by early adopters who had the resources to build machine learning products that can work in the real world. But in the next 5 years, the barriers to entry will exponentially decrease making AI accessible to millions in every industry. As AI becomes more accessible, the technology will move from the Innovation team of a few companies to the technology stack of every product or service design team.
