Future-proofing current artificial intelligence solutions for boosting your business

Like Rancho said in 3 Idiots, we live in a world full of machines. Look around – you cannot deny the normalized impact of digital wave in your everyday life, be it at home, office or anywhere else. Almost every business (SME or corporates) are depending on cutting-edge technologies to deliver products/services in top form. There was a time we believed anything and everything can be created except human intelligence. But the advent of artificial intelligence, deep learning and machine learning has started to change this notion too. And it is high time businesses exploit this artificial intelligence to ease the relationship between humans and machines for better productivity.

Using technology to automate and duplicate menial mundane tasks, assess data products and deliver business insights is what AI is all about. In simple words, AI is a cluster of innovative technologies that allows machines to sense, analyse, deduce and act like humans. And now AI is being applied to map customer persona and predict customer behaviour. Many domains like healthcare, Fintech, travel & tourism and lifestyle among others have adopted it to improve customer relations and support. A perfect blend of human and artificial intelligence can resolve much of the current gaps in the ever-increasing data-driven business sector, offering better service to people and freeing staffs to focus on more challenging, complex and creative endeavours.

An example from the current business solutions:

How is this made possible? Here is an example. You know we live in an intricately connected world and enterprises can easily acquire big data they can use to propel their business. How does a Fintech company know you are eligible for a credit card or personal loan without even meeting you once? Machine learning, again. It studies your background, current income, spending habits, credit history and social score garnered from different sources to conclude what to offer you. Data and patterns are interpreted at superhuman pace and accuracy through automatic evolvement and repetitive learning. This is expected to be commonplace by 2020; chatbots already are. One would never imagine they are communicating with a bot at the other end, judging by precise responses from the other side.

More examples:

a.     Virtual Agents AKA Bots: Ever wondered about the chat windows that pop up excitingly the minute you open some product websites? The way they interact with you makes you wonder how they know so much about you. Artificial intelligence, my friend. These bots display human-like traits and communicate effortlessly to resolve your concerns and queries while performing business processes.

b.     Machine Learning: It’s nothing but creating apps that can self-tune itself to ever-changing inputs and data amassed so far. Unearthing one or more patterns in customer behaviour by data analysis is the next step – the customer’s gender, age, income, number of hours spent browsing for specific products and services and so on, and them mapping out their preferences.

c.      Biometric ID: Most corporate companies use this system to keep track of employees’ attendance by comparing their fingerprints (or any other unique biological characteristic) to those recorded in the system.

d.     Amplified Reality: You might have noticed certain websites requesting you to disclose your location. Geography is, of course, one of the fundamental predictors. They also interpret system-generated and unique sensory inputs (speech recognition) to boost reasoning and analysis of exploratory data.

Is AI’s end goal to make us humans outdated?

This is a common fear among employees, exacerbated by opinions of the likes of Stephen Hawking. It is quite common to get anxious when one is or about to be flung out of his/her comfort zone. However, these fears are often unfounded. AI can integrate with the staff’s existing knowledge, enhancing manual potential and making logical recommendations with minimal errors and biases. As AI uses big data analytics, it can aid workers improve productivity, even with automated jobs like sending regular reminders to customers. In short, it paves way for more creativity. Decision Intelligence Assistants will better themselves over time, discovering new ways to combine and decipher information. There will come a time when AI will be regarded as more of an equal and less of a mindless tool. Let’s raise a toast to that!