At CERAWeek 2021, Bill Scudder, Senior Vice President and GM of AIoT Solutions at Aspen Technology, discussed the convergence of AI and IIoT into a new paradigm: The Artificial Intelligence of Things or AIoT. He described how a variety of market forces are putting increased pressure on operators to improve their operational efficiency. These forces include economic, sustainability, workforce and technology. Bill illustrated how industrial AI is defined by three domains, software at scale, data science/AI and domain expertise, and that, to be successful, Industrial AI solutions need to encompass all three domains. Finally, Bill introduced the vision of the Self-Optimizing Plant and the necessity of robust Industrial AI infrastructure to support it.