Frontline Systems was recently recognized as a Sample Vendor in the Gartner Hype Cycle™ for Artificial Intelligence, 2023; and Hype Cycle for Data Science and Machine Learning, 2023 for the Composite AI use case. 

“Gartner Hype Cycles provide a graphic representation of the maturity and adoption of technologies and applications, and how they are potentially relevant to solving real business problems and exploiting new opportunities. Gartner Hype Cycle methodology gives you a view of how a technology or application will evolve over time, providing a sound source of insight to manage its deployment within the context of your specific business goals.”*

Unlike many well-known vendors in data science and machine learning (DSML), Frontline Systems has offered tools for business rules, optimization and resource allocation, and simulation and risk analysis capabilities fully integrated with “predictive” machine learning tools. With decades of investment in Composite AI methods, Frontline has helped more than a thousand enterprise customers effectively use these latter capabilities. Yet we know that for many – and perhaps most – large firms, adoption of these methods is still at an early stage.

Frontline strongly agrees with analysis in the Gartner Hype Cycle for Artificial Intelligence, 2023:

"Composite AI broadens AI abstraction mechanisms and, ultimately, provides a platform to solve a wider range of business problems in a more effective manner.”

"Composite AI recognizes that no single AI technique is a silver bullet. Composite AI currently aims to combine ‘connectionist’ AI approaches, like machine learning (ML), with ‘symbolic’ and other AI approaches, like rule-based reasoning, graph analysis, or optimization techniques. The goal is to enable AI solutions that require less data and energy to learn, embodying more abstraction mechanisms. Composite AI is at the center of the generative AI and decision intelligence market emergence."

Frontline Systems offers deep support for a range of Composite AI methods in three major products:  Analytic Solver® for Microsoft Excel users, Solver SDK® for developers, and RASON®, Frontline’s cloud platform that enables professional developers, “citizen” developers using “low-code/no-code” tools such as Power Automate, and business analysts using Excel to easily work together to create, deploy and manage decision intelligence models.. 

Frontline’s products bring the power of Composite AI to help business leaders make complex decisions about allocating resources and managing risk in the presence of uncertainty. With these capabilities, business leaders can create models of their present and future business situations that include both company-specific plans and constraints, and external forces and uncertainties. This Composite AI-powered modeling gives businesses better ways to make decisions, from managing cash, raw materials and inventory in the short run, to deciding which projects to fund in the longer run based on likelihood of success and expected future cash flow.

A unique “Composite AI” capability that is available only in Frontline Systems products is fully-automated Risk Analysis of Machine Learning Models.  The subject of a 2022 patent filing, this capability views the datasets used in machine learning as samples from (often correlated) probability distributions, uses automated distribution fitting, sample generation, and Monte Carlo simulation methods for synthetic data generation, then applies these tools to assess the risk that a machine learning (ML) model will perform differently “in practice” than it did “in development and testing”. 

According to the Gartner report, Composite AI offers the following Business Impact:

  • "First, it brings the power of AI to a broader group of organizations that do not have access to large amounts of historical or labeled data but possess significant human expertise. 
  • Second, it helps to expand the scope and quality of AI applications (that is, more types of reasoning challenges can be embedded). 
  • Other benefits, depending on the techniques applied, include better interpretability and resilience and the support of augmented intelligence."

And Frontline has done more to enable businesses to realize the benefits of these methods: Unlike “connectionist” machine learning approaches that rely primarily on large amounts of data, these “Composite AI” methods rely on the ability of business analysts, using their domain expertise, to create models of important aspects of a company’s operations. But most business analysts don’t have advanced degrees in “operations research” or “management science”. That’s where Frontline’s new AI Agent, embedded in both Analytic Solver® for Excel and its RASON® cloud platform, can help.

Frontline’s AI Agent uses a Large Language Model (LLM) that has been “pre-trained” on Frontline’s nearly 3,500 pages of User Guides and Reference Guides, plus nearly 150 example models. It will not only answer a business analyst’s questions and maintain the full context of his/her conversations, but will provide custom links into those 3,500 pages and documentation and 150 example models, to enable the analyst to get started on actual model-building with just one click.  

Frontline Systems is pleased to be mentioned as a Sample Vendor for Composite AI use case. We believe that we share the belief that the Composite AI category offers significant business value and that the category still has massive potential to grow and attain widespread market penetration. 

Composite AI is already helping business leaders create more accurate models of their present-day business situations and possible future outcomes. With the power of these methods, business leaders can make better-informed decisions to allocate resources more effectively, while mitigating risks and maximizing ROI. With its deep experience in the Composite AI category, Frontline is excited to see further development and growth in this field, so we can keep innovating and unlocking business value.  

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*Gartner, Gartner Methodology, Gartner Hype Cycle

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