How will it transform the world as we know it?
While Artificial Intelligence sounded like a clarion call from a dystopian sci-fi society a few years ago, it has permeated into our everyday lives to seamlessly enhance how we search, purchase and communicate. Artificial Intelligence is the ability to use algorithms to create predictive models from copious amounts of data by machines, which then use these inferences to make recommendations that are personalized and highly accurate. AI technologies are already powering brands to engineer a better consumer experience like the “product recommendations” we see after browsing Amazon, or similar playlists lining up on your music app. All these are examples of AI in action.
To a layman, Artificial Intelligence evokes images of futuristic self-driving cars and robots laboring in operation theatres, but machine learning is following a similar trajectory to digital marketing or cloud computing, that means AI will soon be embraced in all business models to understand consumer behavior to give them exactly what they need.
AI is still in its nascent stage but it is already driving a plethora of industries to achieve the previously impossible. Machines can amplify our cognitive strengths, enhance the amount of data we can process, and cut down the time required to conduct higher-level tasks to an unimaginable level. This is why Customer Service companies are deploying AI to facilitate conversations through chatbots, present personalized customer service by scanning huge data and quickly transcribing the best response. AI intervention increases the volume of requests handled many-fold, which would otherwise require more human resources.
AI is also behind the “suggested responses” to messages on android devices which are recommended after sifting through millions of similar conversation examples and learning patterns of the appropriate responses. The ability to find addresses through digital maps in intricate localities is due to the AI that has learned to read street names and addresses from billions of street view images. AI basically reduces complexity and gives users the most relevant results.
Apart from making buying easier, AI is also revolutionising the medical field, where the time is taken to diagnose and screen diseases is greatly reduced by machines that aggregate the patient’s medical history, running it against similar complexities from millions of patient’s records to define what is wrong, and give quick suggestions that are life-saving. AI can also analyze a patient’s medical history and inputs about their lifestyle to predict potential dangers.
AI reduces the chances of error, which can sometimes cost companies millions of dollars, as in the case of fraudulent transactions. HSBC uses AI to detect fraudulent transactions in which humans would take ages to scan, as millions of transactions take place every single day! The AI uses information like IP addresses, customer behavior and history of the customer to detect fraud, and this has significantly reduced the rate of fraudulent transactions in the US, ever since HSBC implemented AI there. The AI is also programmed to flag down questionable transactions for humans to evaluate.
In China, AI is being used with mass-surveillance to address issues of public safety, respond to crimes using AI facilitated facial recognition.
AI is transforming heavy factories where robotic arms can carry out unprecedented levels of customization, following new directions in which a human can reprogram using a tablet. The inexhaustive agility of machines and the creativity of a human is being used to augment an AI that follows the nuances of a robotic worker that completes mammoth physical tasks without exhaustion.
This would undeniably increase productivity by leaps and bounds.
Artificial Intelligence is the future. In business, AI can optimize internal business operations, enhance features of a product, carry out relevant market research with accuracy and even optimize sales by pushing personalized marketing to customers. In the agriculture industry, AI can predict future crop yields by analyzing enormous amounts of data about soil properties, historical harvests, weather patterns, etc. Watch out for our upcoming blogs on Artificial Intelligence and how this technology is predicted to redefine software development, support, data privacy, etc.
At the moment, our tryst with AI pertains greatly to our smartphones and devices, but soon AI would be instrumental in diagnosing potential diseases, warning against natural disasters or helping solve major problems like water depletion. The synergy of machine learning and human creativity will achieve what humans alone could not fathom. From predictive searches to AI-enabled market research, the AI revolution is on the cusp of changing how we commune with the world around us.