{"id":16246,"date":"2023-11-29T19:11:43","date_gmt":"2023-11-29T19:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/tech\/?p=16246"},"modified":"2023-11-29T19:11:45","modified_gmt":"2023-11-29T19:11:45","slug":"ai-as-a-service-definition-types-benefits-top-providers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businessyield.com\/tech\/technology\/ai-as-a-service-definition-types-benefits-top-providers\/","title":{"rendered":"AI As A Service: Definition, Types, Benefits & Top Providers","gt_translate_keys":[{"key":"rendered","format":"text"}]},"content":{"rendered":"\n
Today, almost all companies are using at least one type of ‘as a service’ offering as a way to focus on their core business and outsource other needs to third-party experts and vendors, and AI is no exception.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Artificial Intelligence as a Service (AIaaS) is the third-party offering of artificial intelligence (AI) outsourcing. It enables individuals and companies to experiment with AI for various purposes without a large initial investment and with lower risk.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AIaaS provides out-of-the-box platforms and is easy to set up, making it simple to test out various public cloud platforms, services and machine learning (ML) algorithms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Artificial intelligence as a service (AIaaS) is defined as a service that outsources AI to enable individuals and companies to explore and scale AI techniques at a minimal cost. It refers to out-of-box AI services rendered by companies to potential subscribers. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI refers to a paradigm where computer systems perform human-like tasks by reasoning, picking up cues from past experiences, learning, and solving problems. Broadly, disparate technologies such as machine learning (ML), natural language processing (NLP), computer vision, and robotics come under the AI roof.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Artificial intelligence benefits businesses in numerous ways, right from improving customer experiences to automating redundant tasks. However, developing in-house AI-based solutions is a complex process that requires huge capital investment. That\u2019s why businesses are openly embracing AIaaS, where third-party providers offer ready-to-use AI services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like software as a service (SaaS) and infrastructure as a service (IaaS), AIaaS provides an \u2018as a service\u2019 package that a third-party provider hosts. This is a cost-effective and reliable alternative to software developed by an in-house team. As such, AI becomes accessible to everyone in the corporate ecosystem. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
With AIaaS, end users can harness the capabilities of AI through application programming interfaces (APIs) and tools without having to write any complex codes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI encompasses a variety of technologies, including robots, computer vision, cognitive computing, ML models, and natural language processing (NLP).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI algorithms are frequently divided into two categories: deep learning algorithms that use deep neural networks and machine learning algorithms such as regression and classification.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Machine learning algorithms — the primary tool used in AI — are a collection of guidelines or methods that are applied, generally by a computer, to compute or solve a problem. The typical methods computers use to solve problems or provide decision-making capabilities include either extensive data analysis or the creation of generalizations and statistical forecasts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The AIaaS architecture has three basic components: AI infrastructure, AI services, and AI tools. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI infrastructure supports underlying AI and ML models. Data and compute are the two fundamental pillars of these models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ML relies heavily on input data that can be sourced from multiple sources. Data can come from relational databases, unstructured data (binary objects), stored annotation in NoSQL databases and a pool of raw data in a data lake. All these are used as inputs to the ML models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Advanced ML techniques, including neural networks, perform complex computations that require a blend of central processing units (CPUs) and graphic processing units (GPUs). Both these components complement each other and enable faster processing. Cloud providers offer clusters of GPU-CPU combination-backed virtual machines (VMs) and containers in an AIaaS setup. Clients can use this infrastructural arrangement to train ML models and choose to pay on a use-per-use basis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Public cloud vendors provide APIs and services that are readily available and do not need custom ML models for their consumption. These APIs and services extract benefits from the underlying infrastructure, which the cloud provider owns.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to APIs and infrastructure, cloud vendors provide tools that can help data scientists and developers. These tools promote the usage of VMs, storage, and databases as they are in sync with the data and compute platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although AIaaS is still evolving, it can be a game-changer in the context of data and compute services over the coming years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Common types of AIaaS include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These can include chatbots that use natural language processing (NLP) algorithms to learn from conversations with human beings and imitate the language patterns while providing answers. This frees up customer service employees to focus on more complicated tasks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
These are the most widely used types of AIaaS today.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Short for application programming interface, APIs are a way for services to communicate with each other. APIs allow developers to add a specific technology or service into the application they are building without writing the code from scratch. Common options for APIs include:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
ML and AI frameworks are tools that developers can use to build their own model that learns over time from existing company data.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Machine learning is often associated with big data but can have other uses\u2014and these frameworks provide a way to build in machine learning tasks without needing the big data environment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
If machine learning frameworks are the first step towards machine learning. This option is a way to add in richer machine-learning capabilities using templates, pre-built models, and drag-and-drop tools to assist developers in building a more customized machine-learning framework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Like any other \u201cas a service\u201d offering, AIaaS brings value to companies without costing huge amounts. But there are also distinct drawbacks to using a cloud-based AI system that no business should ignore.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AI platforms, including Amazon Machine Learning, Microsoft Azure Cognitive Services and Google Cloud Machine Learning, can help organizations determine what might be possible with their data. Before committing, organizations can learn what works and enable scaling by testing the algorithms and services of different providers. When a platform is found that scales to requirements, the resources of these large providers can back up the needed scaling with compute capacity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The following are some popular vendor platforms that offer AIaaS services:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
AWS is a platform that offers multiple cloud services and more than 200 services across the globe. AWS provides several products for common use cases for machine learning and AI, including Amazon SageMaker and Amazon Alexa. Customers, companies and individuals with impairments all benefit from these Amazon AI services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Anolytics is an AIaaS platform for data annotation that offers outsourcing services for ML and AI models.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Businesses can select from a variety of prebuilt apps from IBM Watson, including Watson Assistant for creating virtual assistants and Watson Natural Language Understanding for performing complex text analysis tasks. No prior knowledge of data science or machine learning is required and developers can also create, train and deploy ML models across any cloud using IBM Watson Studio.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Google Cloud provides many AI and machine learning tools, such as the Tensor Processing Unit (TPU), which accelerates AI model training. To expedite the development process, Google also offers several other AI technologies, including Google Lending DocAI, which automates the processing of mortgage documents.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
LivePerson is a SaaS startup that uses the LivePerson Conversational Cloud. It enables the integration of systems for voice, email and messaging customer experiences and aims to use intent discovery to inform brands about what their customers want.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Data scientists, engineers and machine learning experts frequently use Microsoft Azure machine learning and AI platforms. One such platform is the cloud-based service called Azure NLP, which aids in interpreting and analyzing texts. Python and R language support are also available through Azure. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Microsoft Azure offers prebuilt libraries, specialized code packages and other AIaaS offerings, including conversational AI and Azure Cognitive Services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
SAS is an AI-driven analytics platform that uses AI to handle big data and manage and retrieve data from various sources. The company also offers services in NLP and visual data mining and provides an easy GUI through the SAS language.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
One of the most popular services offered by ServiceNow is AIOps, which is an artificial intelligence platform that’s designed to help simplify IT operations. With products such as AI Contact Center and AI Customer Care, ServiceNow also offers choices for digital security.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As a rapidly growing field, AIaaS has plenty of benefits that bring early chapters to the table. But, its drawbacks mean there\u2019s plenty of room for improvement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While there may be bumps in the road while developing AIaaS, it\u2019s likely to be as important as other \u201cas a service\u201d offerings. Taking these valuable services out of the hands of the few means that many more organizations can harness the power of AI and ML.<\/p>\n\n\n\n