Not a day goes by without thrilling or terrifying media stories about the consequences of our Artificial Intelligence progress. There is good reason to be energized by the potential, but we’re being overwhelmed by hype. As an engineer, I’m an enthusiastic realist when it comes this technology. What motivates me is not the technology, but what it can do to help us to solve problems, in this case complex problems. But let’s also be pragmatic: Is AI really going to solve all our problems? During the session, I will give you a quick and accessible introduction to buzzwords such as Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, etc. We will have a short look at some current practical implications of AI on people's lives and livelihoods. And finally, we will check the potential of Intelligence Amplification, a world where information technology will augment human intelligence.

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Mieke De Ketelaere is Customer Intelligence Director at SAS for the West Europe region. She holds a master degree in civil and industrial engineering and specialised on robotics and artificial during her studies. Over the last 25 years, she has worked for several multinationals on all aspects of data and analytics. In the last years, she started to focus more on customer intelligence environments: from transactional CRM to advanced analytical customer insight and interactive marketing. She is specialized in helping customers in defining the steps to grow in maturity in customer experience, customer intimacy and customer lifecycle management. With her deep understanding of the new digital data streams (online, social, mobile, sensor, chatbots, etc) and her understanding of big data platforms, Mieke De Ketelaere is requested by different business schools as a guest speaker on the topic in the last 5 years. Recently, she created a series of knowledge exchanges on Artificial Intelligence, in order to demystify the hype around it and to focus on the real value it can bring to the business teams. In 2018, she was nominated “ICT Woman of the Year” by Trends.