AI democratization

AI democratization is the spread of artificial intelligence development to a wider user base that includes those without specialized knowledge of AI. The trend is being driven by large companies that are heavily invested in artificial intelligence, including IBM, Amazon, Facebook, Microsoft and Google, in the interests of furthering its development and adoption.

AI development has typically demanded a lot of resources including expert-level knowledge, computing power and money. AI democratization involves facilitating development by providing user-friendly resources and supports such as pre-built algorithms, intuitive interfaces and high-performance cloud computing platforms. Having those supports in place makes it feasible for in-house developers without special expertise to create their own machine learning applications and other AI software.

AI democratization and related initiatives such as data democratization and build-your-own software development are part of a growing trend to popularize and provide wider access to technologies that formerly were only available to a tech-savvy subset of the population.

The democratization trend is mostly confined to enterprise environments but is likely to continue to spread, reaching a consumer base in time.