CIOs Get Strategic AI Support From the Open Source Community

CIOs today have one of the hardest jobs in the enterprise. Collectively, they are scrambling to innovate faster, adopt new technologies such as cloud, artificial intelligence (AI), and blockchain, and drive massive revenue growth for the business.

AI is one of only 10 critical tech trends for CIOs to embrace this year, according to Gartner’s 2018 trend report, but it is a particularly challenging area of investment for IT leaders as it encompasses a whole new approach to software development, including building a team with technical capabilities spanning speech analytics, deep learning, natural language processing, and neural networking.

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In the midst of this intense need for AI and other modern technologies to permeate every aspect of the business, there is an impending tech skills shortage. LinkedIn’s 2017 Emerging Jobs Report cites that there are roughly 300,000 AI practitioners, but millions of open roles which require AI skills. And according to a recent Ernst & Young poll of AI professionals, lack of talent is the greatest barrier to AI adoption across the enterprise.

So how can CIOs meet growing needs to produce more AI solutions at a faster rate with fewer people?

Last week, CIOs got a little help from an unexpected place.

The Linux Foundation has announced the creation of a new project, LF Deep Learning Foundation, designed to “support and sustain open source innovation in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and deep learning while striving to make these critical new technologies available to developers and data scientists everywhere.”

We are excited to offer a deep learning foundation that can drive long-term strategy and support for a host of projects in the AI, machine learning, and deep learning ecosystems.

Jim Zemlin
Executive Director, The Linux Foundation

The LF Deep Learning Foundation will help CIOs meet strategic business objectives and build out AI capabilities for their organizations using resources from The Linux Foundation’s open source community. The Linux Foundation states, “Many AI tools today are difficult to implement and require significant domain expertise.”

The Foundation’s first project, The Acumos Marketplace, provides a visual workflow to design AI applications as well as a marketplace for freely sharing AI solutions and data models. This makes AI skills more accessible in a time when these skills are challenging to find for staffing a full team. It also lowers the barrier to entry for CIOs, so they can begin investing in more innovative solutions to meet business needs around AI.

CIOs face many challenges in positioning their IT organizations as effective and strategic business partners. AI will continue to be a challenge, but this new Foundation provides necessary resources for CIOs to get started so they don’t get left behind.

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