Artificial intelligence became one of the hottest tech topics in 2017 and is still attracting attention and investments. Although scientists have been working on the technology and heralding its numerous anticipated benefits for more than four decades, it’s only in the past few years that society’s artificial intelligence dreams have come to fruition.

In 2012 when I worked at Lenovo, the company set out on a journey to create the Lenovo Unified Customer Intelligence (LUCI) platform. The decisions we made with regard to people and technology involved in that project helped to shape my self-development, relationships with others on the team, and relationship with executives.

In recent years, APIs have encouraged the emergence of new services by facilitating collaboration between applications and databases of one or more companies. Beyond catalyzing innovation, APIs have also revolutionized the customer-company relationship, allowing it to provide an accurate and detailed picture of the consumer at a time when a quality customer experience now counts as much as the price or capabilities of the product.

AB InBev, headquartered in Belgium, is one of the largest fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) companies in the world with a diverse portfolio of well over 500 beer brands, including Budweiser, Corona, Stella Artois, Beck’s, Hoegaarden and Leffe.