Buzzword breakdown: AI
In this evolving landscape, harnessing the potential of AI is more important than ever to stay ahead of the competition. Artificial intelligence now underpins a great deal of data-driven business decision making. The ability to have powerful computation help make smarter business decisions is very attractive. Artificial intelligence (AI) promises to quickly find patterns a human can’t see, avoid human assumptions and find a better way to accomplish goals.
How it works
Artificial intelligence (AI) as a term is used quite often to describe many different systems that take large data sets and turn them into more useful information through the application of powerful algorithms. Some are more truly described as ‘machine learning’ (ML) while others are just the application of algorithms.
True AI is about systems that learn how things work based on code that doesn’t teach rules or systems, it just teaches how to learn. By giving AI only the tools needed to learn from scratch, the AI can find new approaches that traditional high-level coding might miss.
To take advantage of AI, a business can now buy access to AI systems as a service. The likes of Amazon, Microsoft and Google sell access to AI as part of their cloud computing platforms.
Why it matters
Artificial Intelligence is fundamentally about putting large volumes of data to better use. Many businesses have a lot of information but no time to analyse it to improve operations or outcomes.
AI can deliver benefits by finding ways to remove or reduce repetitive business tasks or raise questions about such tasks we may not have realised were worth asking.
Good AI can also continually adapt and improve, even testing itself to ensure that it keeps improving accuracy or other measures for successful operation.
Examples of the kinds of applications where AI can help to drive advanced business outcomes include autonomous driving systems, object recognition in images, advanced analysis of medical imaging data and fraud detection in financial systems.
In a more everyday business context, AI could help make better product and service recommendations to customers and clients. It can also help a business better understand who its best customers are, as well as identify other trends in the business’s data that may not have been spotted.
Pitfalls and possibilities
Using AI or machine learning systems should be carefully managed because, in the end, the buck still stops with the business and the humans in charge. Ensuring the algorithms that drive the AI or ML system are both accurate and fair is very important. This will involve a careful analysis of business needs and a reasonable appraisal of expected outcomes.
Robust testing mechanisms must also check that the results received from an AI are a ‘true match’ for the original intent. Examples come up regularly where AI has been found to effectively ‘cheat’ to deliver results – because it was following the precise letter of its underlying code.
In an ethical context, AI has also been found to unwittingly maintain social bias simply because a lot of existing data is already skewed in terms of race, gender and socioeconomic power. Resetting the baseline to an equitable one takes added effort to ensure an AI is not accidentally maintaining a biased status quo.
With these problems in mind, there are a wealth of opportunities for businesses, large and small, to find ways to integrate AI to speed processes and drive profit.
Disclaimer:
The information is intended to be of a general nature only. We do not accept any legal responsibility for any loss incurred as a result of reliance upon it – please make your own enquiries.
