Open-source AI platforms that can be used by business school students | Tangled AI

Tangled AI Technologies Inc.
6 min readMar 10, 2021

From conversational chatbots to driverless cars, AI has expanded its perimeters to a whole new level today. AI is not restricted anymore to those fancy science fiction stories we used to hear. Interestingly, #artificialintelligence is growing rampantly in the education sector. A study points out that the growth will be around 45% by 2024. Most importantly, business education schools are harnessing the power of AI and its subsets to prepare students for a much better future.

Numerous AI platforms in the market could empower students with data-driven decision making processes and other future business aspects. Thankfully, most of them are #opensourceAI platforms, which means students need not spend a single penny and can enlarge their business insights through AI. They can also contribute to its development by upgrading the source codes.

Here are some of the most popular open-source AI tools that can be used by business school students-

IBM Watson

IBM Watson is probably the most popular end-to-end open-source AI platform used by many business school students. It has an adaptable ecosystem of tools and libraries that can be used to train machine learning models. It can also be used as a prerequisite for training AI models for your future endeavors.

IBM Watson has a strong reputation for its expertise in image and speech recognition models. And it is used to build advanced predictive models by narrowing down structured and unstructured data into a single entity.It allows building your #ML models from scratch and leverage its inbuilt APIs for your business solutions.

Why IBM Watson?

  1. Watson speech to text is a service that enables you to transcribe speech to text. It has been proved as a viable resource for students with hearing impairments.
  2. Predictive analytics can be performed using Watson to understand the performance of the business better commercially and scientifically. Also, understanding consumer trends is an important application of Watson.
  3. It can also be implemented in online attendance polls to monitor students’ presence through its facial recognition model.
  4. Also, the Watson chatbot can act as your assistant for resolving business queries.
  5. Cognitive intelligence in IBM helps deliver personalized learning to b-school students by framing syllabus for each individual, taking into account their learning pattern.
Open-source AI platforms that can be used by business school students | Tangled AI

Suite CRM

Suite CRM is an open-source AI platform that is coupled with #machinelearning for better data insights. It can be leveraged with other machine learning tools through its restful APIs. From building sales to cementing customer relationships, suite CRM does it all for your startup.

How is Suite CRM valuable to B-Schoolers?

  1. Classification of hot leads is performed by AI classification algorithms and personalized messages are sent priority-wise.
  2. Helps to secure customer relations through social media platforms such as Facebook, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp.
  3. Offers a 360-degree view of business trends that is used accordingly to devise marketing strategies.
  4. AI-coupled chatbots provide 24/7 service to customer related queries instantly, thereby achieving a higher customer retention rate.
  5. Suite CRM is an ideal starting point for b-school students to help them achieve greater reach for their startup business.

OpenNN

OpenNN is a free artificial intelligence software written using C++. With universal approximation estimates, openNN works as a free neural network library. It allows the creation of neural networks capable of self-learning. It is capable of forecasting and evaluating technology implementation in businesses.

Why OpenNN?

  1. Its neural networking models offer proof of concept for a business and help in the design and integration of other AI platforms.
  2. Mimics human intelligence and is capable of altering business models and devising marketing strategies.
  3. Helps in constructing financial models that provide rough estimates of the business venture.
  4. UML features provided by OpenNN assists students to visualize and better understand the workflow in a business organization.

Weka tool

The Weka tool is a publicly available workbench for machine learning and can be accessed through a graphical interface or any terminal application. It is a set of ML algorithms applied to specific datasets to garner valuable insights.

It offers higher processing speed and has many real-time use cases in marketing, healthcare, education, business, etc. Unlike the R tool, Weka is used for advanced data mining for complex tasks.

Why Weka for business students?

  1. Weka houses an array of #ml algorithms and libraries that can be used in building machine learning models for your business.
  2. It is most significantly used in predictive analytics for risk assessment and market analysis for future endeavors.
  3. Due to its data mining prospects, it has a good reputation among students to know about the success rate of the business commercially and scientifically.
  4. Also, data mining can be used to keep track of financial initiatives to invest in your business.
  5. It is different from openNN as it does not involve neural networks and directly mines data from the subjected datasets.

Scikit-learn

Scikit Learn covers clustering, classification, association aspects written using python language. The clustering and classification features provide an upper hand to Scikit learn compared to Weka and OpenNN.

It uses sophisticated AI and deep learning algorithms that enable data analysis and data mining.

Also, its data mining feature allows b-school students to better connect with alumni of their school on different social platforms.

How is Scikit-learn handy for b-school students?

  1. The data scraping algorithms allows students to connect with people on the same stream and help them improve their career connections.
  2. This software can help track consumer behavior by analyzing their history and tracking competitive trends to stay ahead in the market.
  3. Another great benefit of Scikit-learn is that it has a fast learning curve.
  4. The data mining feature can be used to scrape details about venture capitalists and their funding behavior to stay competitive in the market.
  5. Scikit-learn offers step by step walkthroughs for beginners from creating data sets to mining valuable insight from those datasets.
  6. It is capable of classifying alumni from different institutions spanning over a wide array of social media platforms and garner data from them.

X.ai

X.ai is a free AI meeting platform that has inbuilt bots and can act as your personal assistant. With the advent of the pandemic, the usage of X.ai has surged in business schools to a whopping $6.8 million in terms of revenue. It automates the whole process of scheduling online meetings and saves a great deal of time.

Why X.ai?

  1. Apart from usual calendar invites, X.ai has access to SMS invites and bots calling up the attendees.
  2. Popular among b-schoolers in scheduling seminars and other formal meetings.
  3. Mail invites are automated through AI-powered bots and subject lines are framed taking into account the requirements of the meeting.
  4. It contains a plethora of tools such as automated attendance systems and a common repository that is dynamically updated after each session.

Winding up

In this digital era, technological advancements are at their peak, and utilizing them to a maximum extent helps you gain the upper hand in today’s competitive market. 26% of startups are facing a downfall due to their lack of tools for creating AI models or their lack of understanding of AI. There is a common misconception that leveraging these AI tools require a good amount of technical expertise. But walkthroughs and tutorials are in abundance to help you in having a good grasp over these tools.Therefore, b-school students can have a good start by leveraging the use of open-source AI platforms discussed in this post and have a competitive edge when starting a new venture.

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