Sweden: the rise and rise of AI
It has become an essential part of the technology industry, including logistics, data mining, medical diagnostics and intelligent personal assistants in smartphones, and will have an increasing impact on our everyday lives.
Sweden is very active on this topic, and both Uppsala University and the KTH Royal Institute of Technology have AI courses which, after completion, will allow students to be able to “analyse and solve problems involving various forms of search algorithms, and develop systems that utilise artificial intelligence”, according to one official course syllabus. As a result, the AI industry is growing in Sweden.
US-based company IPsoft, which works on “automatically speaking customer service”, has recently stepped into the Swedish market. Chetan Dube, chief executive, told Swedish technology magazine Ny Teknik that “Sweden is in the forefront of using innovation to move beyond the competition, not only with small improvements, but in large increments. Innovation is in the blood here. We do not just roll out our technology in Sweden, but also have research and development of cognitive techniques here.” According to Dube, using AI, automatic customer service will make phone calls four times faster and 60% cheaper.
A patent search in the official database of the Swedish Patent and Registration Office gives 297 hits on “artificial intelligence”, showing that this technique is today used in everything from cars to mobile phones and musical melodies.
