Artificial Intelligence - Top Platforms

by Brenda J. Christie

Artificial Intelligence, defined in Wikipedia as 

"Artificial intelligence (AI, also machine intelligence, MI) is intelligence demonstrated by machines, in contrast to the natural intelligence (NI) displayed by humans and other animals. In computer science AI research is defined as the study of "intelligent agents": any device that perceives its environment and takes actions that maximize its chance of successfully achieving its goals.^[1] Colloquially, the term "artificial intelligence" is applied when a machine mimics "cognitive" functions that humans associate with other human minds, such as "learning" and "problem solving".

is back in the news after a self-driving car killed a pedestrian in March of 2018.

An evolving science, artificial intelligence, AI, has many applications including the following:

1. Healthcare
2. Manufacturing
3. Call Center
4. Transportation
5. Agriculture
6. Automotive
7. Energy and Mining
8. Intellectual Property
9. Technical Support
10. Retail
11. Defense
12. Investment Strategies

Some of the platforms on which AI is being built appear in Dave Roe's April 27, 2018 article, "11 Industries being disrupted by AI" which appeared in CMS Wire.

According to a World of Computing article, History of Artificial Intelligence, artificial intelligence was formerly born in an IBM workshop conducted at Dartmouth in 1956.

There are many implications, for artificial intelligence both favorable and unfavorable.  Over the next few weeks, this writer hopes to cover some of the good, bad and downright scary aspects of AI.

Bye for now,

Brenda J. Christie

Continuance of the Mainframe Evolution

by Brenda J. Christie

Read some interesting articles recently depicting how the mainframe, and its supporting tools, continues to proliferate, indeed, to far corners of the world.  All articles referenced appeared in Enterprise Systems Media.

One article, IBM CICS Tools , blew my mind with discussion of a CICS Cloud, and capturing data (presumably to sell to marketing companies) all while lowering TCO, total cost of ownership thru reduction of batch cycles, cross-site workload balancing and support for dynamic mobile workload configuration.

These all may just be staid and true concepts marketed under current terminology, but I was impressed.  Although I did not see much of what went on behind the CICS Systems Programmer's curtain while in the mainframe world, my recollections of discussions I did have do not include tools as those discussed in this article.

Another article which brought back memories, is the one on Attachmate's extension of its terminal emulation product to work on smartphones and tablets.  It was a huge jump to move away from the Wylbur environment to terminal emulation.  This move to be able to access the mainframe from a smartphone or tablet is equally monumental, although I do have concerns about security and introducing vulnerabilities inherent in smartphones/tablets due to their relative youth, into the mainframe.  Quite naturally, Attachmate wants to reassure prospective customers that its security is up to par.  Being hard to kill, the IBM mainframe will most likely be proactive and defend itself, nonetheless.

Finally, there was also a piece, China Needs a Mainframe, which discusses China's love affair with the IBM mainframe, and how it let IBM into China to conduct business.  Predictably, the recent Snowden and other revelations have dampened that honeymoon with the Chinese now advocating to buy local mainframes

All great articles, and definitely worth the read.

Brenda J. Christie

Another Mainframe Convert

By Brenda J Christie

What this article lacks in passion for the MAINFRAME it makes up for in a succinct analysis of its evolution and use.  It also emphasis the role IBM has played in being a business partner to the enterprise, which it attributes to IBM's longevity.


Read it at Zdnet.