AI in the context of Knowledge Management: Fad or Revolution?

Artificial Intelligence (AI): everyone's discussing it, everyone wants it. Yet, how can it affect organization's current reality?

Let's start from the top. Artificial intelligence isn't a new idea, yet its development has certainly advanced during this past decade. When discussing AI, we are actually referring to various technologies, which include:

• Natural Language Processing: we write or even speak in a language we find natural, and the computer understands. This field is referred to as NLP (Natural Language Processing), which is primarily used for searched or customer service bots.
• Machine Learning: An Algorithm based on a software that learns from examples. It improves its abilities each session, based on results and feedback. For example, identifying objects in pictures.
• Search: search engines analyze vast amounts of content (Big Data) and offer insights they've learned from the texts. For example, in Albania, a machine scans the lawsuits processed in a small claims tribunal and offers a suitable verdict. Smart search apps can process various content platforms, including but not restricted to text.
• Smart Sensors: sensors that release and receive data from its surroundings. This phenomenon is sometimes known as the Internet of Things. The sensors perform independently based on what they learned from their environment. For example, a refrigerator that identifies its content, monitors what it is taken out and inserted into it and in what rate. It even orders groceries!
• Robotics- combining smart sensors and apps with AI-based software (such as SIRI or ALEXA) to perform independently. Robots also learn movement, enabling autonomous machinery (such as cars)
• Deep Learning: A machine Learning-oriented genre of solutions, based on an Artificial Neural Network. These solutions were revolutionized in 2013, since serving as a central element in the promotion of AI.

What do all of these have to do with knowledge in organizations?

AI processes all sorts of content, mainly data, pictures and text. KM comes in any use organizations make of AI that involves text.

Can Organizations implement AI in the context of Knowledge Management?

If said content is not written in English, language adaption is a must. That said, once the language barrier is overcome, the following three aspects should be considered:

1.      Do you have a relevant business need?

2.     Do you have relevant, available sources of information of sufficient quality that are sufficiently comprehensive?

3.     Is the investment this project requires justified?

Artificial Intelligence is already here, and it is here to stay. Nevertheless, it still has quite a way to go, as do we. The journey might seem challenging, but it is an important one. Let's get going.