How to Innovate and Create Business Value from Artificial Intelligence (AI): Part 2

Numerous companies of all types are using AI for strong business advantage in innovative ways. I wrote on this topic last week (see here for Part 1) but I really found so many that I am continuing to outline more for you here. Even the most traditional of companies are doing it either to enhance revenue, cut costs and engage their customers even more.

 Infervision in China scans CT scans to allow fast and accurate detection of cancer. There are many companies in this space using AI to detect specific conditions, especially COVID-19 and these include Alibaba’s DAMO Academy and RadLogics who have been accurately diagnosing COVID-19 from CT scans and X Rays (even in asymptomatic patients) with 96-98% accuracy respectively.

 Henn na Hotel chain (with 2 hotels now), owned by H.I.S travel agency is staffed mainly by robots. You will find multi-lingual (Japanese, English, Chinese and Korean) robots in charge of reception and robots that store luggage. The rooms use face recognition instead of keys and electricity usage is reduced by motion sensors that turn lights on and off automatically. The air conditioning is also sensor controlled. The hotel near the Disney resort in outer Tokyo has 100 rooms, 140 robot staff members and 7 human staff members for emergencies. Here is a visit to the hotel.

 Target use AI machine learning and Internet of Things in numerous ways, from operations through to personalized marketing. I am sure the story from Target is now known by everyone. An irate man contacted the manager of a Target store angry that his teenage daughter was being targeted for baby clothes and cribs and that she was too young a demographic for this type of thing. The manager apologized, but a few days later the man was back. He had a talk with his daughter and discovered that she was indeed pregnant and due in August. He had no idea before and owed Target an apology.  Since then, Target has been more careful with how they execute. They realized that when they know someone is pregnant before anyone else, it tends to have the creepy factor, so they started being more subliminal about how they targeted those people. Now they include irrelevant items like lawnmowers in addition to baby clothes so it’s not as obvious they know the consumer is pregnant!

AT&T is using AI in numerous areas. Given that they own HBO, AOL Time Warner and ESPN, a large use of AI is related to video content. AI powered video metadata, including image recognition, generates highly detailed descriptions of video content. On top of that, they use Natural Language Processing in their content tagging to refine how video content is categorized. And their machine learning-based media planning includes predictive algorithms. All of this helps the company match advertisers with their ideal customers to deliver relevant advertising across their owned properties.

Mattel uses AI in their ‘Hello Barbie’ dolls, which can listen and respond appropriately to a child. It also remembers information that friends would know about things like favourite food or favourite games. A transmitter is in the necklace of the doll listens to the child’s conversations and transmits it to the servers at ToyTalk. AI analyzes it to provide an appropriate response in under one second. The one flaw in this product is security. Hackers have shown that the conversation can be hijacked, allowing them to ask the child for personal information such as the house address. This is something Mattel needs to address if they want this doll to be the success it deserves.

Bank of America has been using AI to take over many human customer service functions and it shows. Their hiring in 2019 was down sharply by close to 50% in customer service roles while their AI roles were doubled. They have used AI to automate systems and have introduced chatbots in place of humans to assist customers. This has implications for all industries, as customer service roles are likely to be reduced by around 25% with chatbots and AI powered apps taking over.

 Conclusion

 What we are seeing a lot of is automating operations (while sometimes replacing customer service staff), and far more personalization of marketing.

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For more information on these topics, or to find out how AI can help your business, please contact the author, Dr. Andrée Bates, at [email protected]. Dr. Bates works with healthcare and pharma/biotech companies who want to get the most out of their AI initiatives to deliver value for both their end users and create measurable financial return for the company.