philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

Will AI inspire a new M&M? How artificial intelligence is reshaping Mars

... Mehrish, who oversees Mars’ global digital, data and analytics teams, including in AI and machine learning, says efforts with DALL-E are just a tiny part of the massive AI-focused digital transformation journey Mars has been on over the past five years. 

“We are about midway through, so we are still on that journey,” said Mehrish, who joined Mars in 2018 after a two-decade career in banking, technology, consulting, strategy and data science. The effort behind both AI and digital transformation at Mars, he explained, came from from outgoing CEO Grant Reid with a focus on agile development, speed and scale. 

“It’s a passion project that our new CEO, Poul Weihrauch, is going to continue and build on, so it’s really a top-down mandate and it’s always been a very high priority for the company,” Mehrish said. ...

In 2016, Mars spent $117 million to acquire Whistle, a smart collar startup known as a “Fitbit for dogs.” This past May, Whistle launched Whistle Health, an AI-enabled, data-driven smart device for dogs aimed at preventive care, which a press release said can “translate every dog’s movements into a personalized, holistic wellness index,” including health behaviors like eating, drinking, scratching, licking, sleeping and fitness. 

“These are built on huge training sets with machine learning and AI built in that gives you a score that allows you to track your dog’s health and also ties in with a vet,” said Mehrish. ...

In 2021, it announced a digital twin initiative with Microsoft to develop virtual clones of its physical supply chain operations to help simulate scenarios that would be too difficult to test with physical assets. ...

Over the last two years, the company has moved to what it calls a ‘federated center of growth,’ with business segments adding their own data scientists and engineers. 

“That’s the second wave, as we go down more and more into the organization and upskill our associates from a bottom-up perspective,” Mehrish said.  ...

See the full story here: https://venturebeat.com/ai/will-ai-inspire-a-new-mm-how-artificial-intelligence-is-reshaping-mars/