More than EUR 56 million were spent last year on the Cognitive Knowledge and Artificial Intelligence segment in Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, and estimates show that by 2021 the value of investments will exceed EUR 221 million, according to data presented by Philippe Rogge, Microsoft’s Regional Vice President for CEE.
At the same time, the European Union is ready to invest EUR 24 billion in Artificial Intelligence by 2020, and ten countries in Central and Eastern Europe are part of this plan, according to Philippe Rogge, present at Microsoft Business Summit.
“82 percent of business leaders see the potential for digital transformation, and 85 percent of them think technology is shifting the whole infrastructure and is the key to development. We talk about Digital Transformation in our companies. Here you can become one of the world’s leaders in innovation, and Bucharest has some advantages if we think of education, connectivity… I remember last year, when I was preparing to come to Romania, I was fascinated by all the studies I had read showing that you have the fastest broadband, and that you have Olympians in mathematics,” said Rogge.
The data presented also reveals that all EU companies specialized in the digitization of products and services can make a substantial contribution of EUR 110 billion a year to economic development. In this respect, companies that “embrace” Digital Transformation are on average 26 percent more profitable than those who do not use this concept.
“Artificial Intelligence is now a combination of two things: cognitive interaction – recognition of voice, image, translations, etc., and Machine learning – which actually means the advance to the masses. The combination of the two is now a platform what can be used by each of us today, any company, any student, any person can interact through Machine Learning to solve a problem, I think this is an opportunity we should take advantage of. You may think I’m naive but I do not believe that AI technology can be put anywhere in the hands of students, marketing people, engineers, financiers,” said Rogge.