Dive Brief:

• By  2021, more than 30% of large corporations will adopt smart machines such as cognitive computing, artificial intelligence, machine learning and deep learning, predicted Gartner Thursday.
• The inclusion of smart machines in business will help create fresh pricing models and better detection of fraud, plus improved predictive policing and more dynamic robotics.
• Spending on smart machine consulting and system integration (C&SI) is expected to grow to nearly $29 billion by 2021, a monumental increase from 2016's spending of less than $500 million. 

Dive Insight:

Machine learning and artificial intelligence are designed to work together, but can businesses benefit from both?

Machine learning actually underlies AI, allowing AI to gain the ability to make independent decisions, and it's the independent insight that allows AI to analyze the volumes of data that companies produce and collect. Machine learning is produced by algorithms; AI is the end result of algorithms working together. 

With the impending emergence of smart machines built to play a critical role in business decision-making, the potential changes wrought by larger quantities of data assessment are significant, but supply chain companies must still seek to understand what the Big Data really means, and what role it will eventually play in logistics, warehousing, and freight.