While Python is a widely-used tool for AI development, in this talk I'll make the case for considering R as a platform for developing models for intelligent applications. Firstly, R provides a first-class experience working deep learning frameworks with its keras integration. Equally importantly, it provides the most comprehensive suite of statistical data analysis tools, which are extremely useful for many intelligent applications such as transfer learning. I'll give a few high-level examples in this talk, and we'll go into further detail in the accompanying interactive code lab.