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by Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger
Premium summary · Opens in the app · 30 min read
Every day, companies announce new artificial intelligence initiatives. They promise transformation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. Yet behind the press releases, a quieter story unfolds. According to various industry estimates, a significant majority of AI projects never make it into production. They stall in research labs, collapse under the weight of bad data, or get abandoned when the gap between expectation and reality becomes too wide to ignore.
**Author:** Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger with Wilson Pang **Estimated Reading Time:** 42 minutes
### What You'll Learn
How to move AI from an abstract buzzword into a practical tool that solves real business problems. You'll discover why most AI projects fail, how to choose the right first project, what makes data truly useful, and how to build teams and processes that deliver lasting results without compromising ethics or security.
### Who This Book Is For
Business leaders who need to understand AI well enough to make sound decisions. Product managers responsible for delivering AI-powered features. Technical practitioners who want to see how their work fits into the bigger picture. And anyone who suspects that the gap between AI hype and AI reality is wider than the headlines suggest.
Every day, companies announce new artificial intelligence initiatives. They promise transformation, efficiency, and competitive advantage. Yet behind the press releases, a quieter story unfolds. According to various industry estimates, a significant majority of AI projects never make it into production. They stall in research labs, collapse under the weight of bad data, or get abandoned when the gap between expectation and reality becomes too wide to ignore. This book exists because that gap is not inevitable. Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger has spent her career on the front lines of applied AI. She has built machine learning products at companies like IBM Watson, Figure Eight, and Appen. She has seen what works and what fails. More importantly, she has seen patterns. The organizations that succeed with AI do not possess some magical technical advantage. They follow a disciplined approach that starts with business problems, not technology. They treat data as a strategic asset. They build teams that cross traditional boundaries. They test ideas in controlled pilots before betting the company on them. The problem is that most books about AI fall into two unhelpful categories. The first category celebrates the technology with breathless enthusiasm, promising that algorithms will solve everything if only you embrace them. The second category warns of impending doom, painting AI as an unstoppable force that will eliminate jobs and amplify inequality. Neither perspective helps a product manager who needs to decide whether to greenlight a chatbot project. Neither helps an executive who wants to know if her data is good enough to train a model. Rochwerger writes for the practitioner. Her perspective is grounded in the messy reality of building AI systems that have to work in the real world, where data is incomplete, users behave unpredictably, and business requirements shift without warning. She does not pretend these challenges are easy. She shows that they are manageable with the right approach. The stakes are higher than most people realize. When AI…
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Get the complete summary in the appStart with business problems, not technology capabilities.
Choose a Goldilocks problem for your first AI project: narrow enough to solve quickly, impactful enough to matter.
Data quality determines model quality. Invest in representative, accurate, clean data.
Build cross-functional teams that include domain experts, not just data scientists.
Run pilots before scaling. Define success criteria in advance and plan for scale.
Plan for production realities: monitoring, retraining, security, and incident response.
"Real World AI" is a strong fit if you want practical ideas around artificial intelligence, business, technology, especially themes like start with business problems, not technology capabilities; choose a goldilocks problem for your first ai project: narrow enough to solve quickly, impactful enough to matter. The MinuteRead summary distills these concepts into a focused read, whether you're deciding whether to buy the book or applying its lessons at work.
Motivated to help readers with responsible AI isn't just good for your business; it's good for society, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger wrote “Real World AI” to package those ideas for a fast, focused read. In “Real World AI”, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger focuses on responsible AI isn't just good for your business; it's good for society. Through “Real World AI”, Alyssa Simpson Rochwerger distills the core ideas on artificial intelligence into lessons readers can absorb in a single short sitting. Readers …
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