Nowadays artificial intelligence is becoming more and more popular. Everyone says that AI is our future in every type of business. Have you ever wondered, what AI really is? Or which companies are the biggest players in the AI market? And finally: how could you use artificial intelligence, so that your business becomes better for clients and employees?
WHAT IS AI REALLY ALL ABOUT?
Artificial intelligence is the study of how to train computers so that they perform human tasks. Currently it is not as developed as heroes in a lot of science fiction films – we do not have our C-3PO, yet. However, our machines are already very advanced.
Today our AI is highly specialized, so they focus only on a single task. They are trained to accomplish specific tasks, recognize patterns. A great example of AI is face recognition on Facebook or recommendations about other products, which you see during shopping on the Internet. And what about the future? According to the IDC report in 2023 spending on AI worldwide will reach approximately $98 billion.
HOW DOES IT WORK?
How are these computers trained, so they are able to learn themselves? Here comes machine learning. It is a concept that machines can learn on their own, not explicitly being programmed before. The idea is that it takes a lot of data in some topic, and learns new things from this data. Afterwards it uses what it learned for some predictions about the future. As said before, when you do shopping on the internet, you receive some recommendations about other products that you may buy. Machine learning is the thing that makes them, based on previous clients and their choices.
Another important concept in this subject is deep learning. This name is about algorithms, which use neural networks to recognize pictures and natural language processing. It is used for example in self-driving cars.
THE BIGGEST AND MOST FAMOUS PLAYERS
AI is a very interesting and forward-looking solution – in 2019 the largest share of technology spending was on IT services – to design and implement AI projects (36.7% CAGR). Which companies also see it as their future and are in a group of biggest players on the market?
- Google – one of the services they offer is AI Hub – it lets your company privately host AI content. You can also easily evolve Google Cloud AI and their technologies for production on Google Cloud. Google also offers tools that make it easier for developers to add conversation, language and structured data to their applications – AI building blocks.
- Amazon Web Services – AWS has their own assistants. As an example of it, we can name a well known Alexa – general purpose assistant.
- IBM – some time ago they created amazing Watson. This supercomputer lets you use applications based on AI to data service on various platforms – not only IBM Cloud, but also AWS, Azure, Google or your own. It helps you optimize your employees’ time and predict the future.
- GE Healthcare – their goal is to treat patients more quickly, cutting costs and improving outcomes at the same time.
- Microsoft Azure – this cloud helps you to use solutions that analyze images, make predictions using data and imitate human behaviors.
HOW CAN BUSINESS BENEFIT FROM AI?
We have talked a lot about AI in general, but what could your company gain from it? Let’s see short summary of four AI benefits for big and small:
- Automatization of time consuming and repeatable processes
Nowadays there are a lot of processes in which workers do the same every time. This is a place for AI development. Thanks to it, there will be better prediction and personalisation of these processes. People, who now work on repeatable processes, will be able to work more creatively. All AI actions will improve marketing, service and sales. Very good example of automatization is chatbots. In different companies they answer a lot of customers’ questions (not rarely similar), they do it faster and sometimes maybe even better. And employees at the same time can do more interesting, challenging and changeable tasks. - AI will create new jobs
Every new technology replaces some of the workplaces, but it also creates new ones. There are both optimistic and pessimistic predictions, whether the balance with AI will be positive or negative. Gartner provided that till the end of 2020 AI will eliminate 1.8 million workplaces, but at the same time, it will create 2.3 million new. Whatsmore it is anticipated that there will be 2 million new places to work created in connection with AI till 2025. - Benefits for banking sector
When it comes to different frauds, AI is and will be very helpful. People are not able to analyze so much different data, as computers can. We for example can resolve data from one bank, whereas AI can in the same time, analyze data from five different. And it can find some patterns that are visible only during comparison in different banks, not in one. Some of the patterns that AI found, can be first signs of big frauds and thanks to fast identification, we can prevent bad situations. - Benefits for healthcare
AI helps to treat patients more quickly, as good as before, or even better. It also allows us to cut costs. For example GE Healthcare with use of AI is creating better care for treated patients. By incorporating a variety of data the algorithm will be able to learn how to recognize normal and abnormal results of some examinations. AI will be helpful for example by x-ray assessment.
AI has big development potential, although it still lacks a bit to science fiction robots. Our AI substitutes us in wearisome actions, allowing us to turn on our creativity. It is improving access and efficiency, but at the same time reducing costs. If only we use it in the right way, it will be extremely helpful. I hope that you see now that AI is the future for different businesses.