The world overstates the present fear of future risk. Autonomous systems are our future. One day we will wake up to some event that will make it clear that the robots have taken over but just not in the way we always thought. Robots take many forms. A driverless car is a robot. A drone over Afghanistan is a robot. Siri is a robot as are high frequency trading systems. And the autonomous systems that Amazon uses to manage their warehouses and logistics are collections of robots acting in concert. In short, robots, or autonomous systems, are slowly taking over the execution of key processes that run our businesses and our lives. We define an autonomous system to be an integration at the data and process level of three components: sensors or the Internet of Things that collect data; big data that stores and processes data; and artificial intelligence, which takes the information, makes decisions, and acts. On occasions, we add in actuators, which are motors that are responsible for moving or controlling a mechanism or system. Other words for an autonomous system with actuators are "robot," "driverless car," and "unmanned drone."
This book describes the coming disruptions caused by autonomous systems (AS), which are unique blends of AI, analytics, and the Internet of Things (IoT). An example of an AS is a driverless car. Analytics is the key element here that is still receiving scant attention as compared to the advances in AI and IoT. This book shows how disruption across many industries caused by the presence of AS will be pervasive and that analytics, which is created by the IoT and other sensors, provides the content from which AI can make decisions. These decisions are no longer the purview of humans only. AS will transcend what machines currently do. We will show how the impact of AS will start to manifest in the coming years.