December 20198 BY SANKAR S. VILLUPURAM, DIGITAL SERVICES LEADER IN EAST ASIA, ARUPSlow and steady wins the race­we have listened to this moral story in our childhood, but the story did not end there. To make it crisp, rabbit rectified his error in the second race, ran without lazing to win. Tortoise reflected on it and realized that he was not racing to his strength, set up a race track with land and water, in which rabbit, though ran fast on the land, got stuck on the river bank. Tortoise went slower in land but crossed the river to win the race.In today's artificial intelligence (AI) world, the race of rabbit and tortoise is still applicable ­ AI the rabbit and construction the tortoise.Rabbits Chasing CarrotsTechnology cycle iterations are becoming shorter and swifter, the latest silver lining being AI. Sensors have become cheaper, communication costs are dropping constantly, advancement in storage and computer technology has quantum frogged in the last five years. Every industry leader would like to be in the space of predictive and prescriptive "dCom"­data commerce (carrots)Tortoise in the DreamlandIndustry research reports quote that construction (tortoise) industry labor-productivity growth averaged 1 percent a year over the last two decades, as compared with world economy growth of 2.8 percent and 3.6 percent in manufacturing. It maybe heartwarming to know that construction productivity is performing better than farming. Tortoise believes its shell is the defense against any threat (disruption).Restrictions and regulations in construction industry make it a protected one, making transformation much slower, where transparency and efficiency are considered as luxury in this protected dreamland. Higher entry barriers ­ qualification criteria and capex give tortoise a hallucination of lazy rabbit dosing under the tree. Little does tortoise realize that times have changed drastically.Respond to Tweets, Not 5-year PlansReal estate clients and asset managers around the world show an urge to drive their business on current trends and extend that to predict the near future, rather than historic patterns simply because the buyers' requirements are determined by STEEP (social, technology, economy, environment and politics). These are changed by instant tweets rather than a 5 or 10-year plan proposed by the government. Clients need to feel the pulse of their end-users or assets in real-time.Evolution of Edge AIThe need for predictive and prescriptive intelligence fires up the demand for petabytes of processed information in close to real time. Cities, transport, airports and mission critical infrastructure consist of thousands of critical components. We need more intelligence at every layer to ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI) AND THE CONSTRUCTION INDUSTRY: THE STORY OF RABBIT AND TORTOISEIN MYV EW
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