Artificial intelligence has become a very important part of the technology industry. The simplest way to explain it is it is the creation of intelligent machines that can perform human tasks. The only difference is that these intelligent machines do not have biology functions. Otherwise, the machines are given problem-solving skills, learning and planning ability and even speech recognition from time to time.
Machines can often react like humans if they have abundant information relating to the world. The perception of these machines relies on the capability to use sensory inputs to deduce the different aspects of the world. For example, the microphone for speech recognition and the camera for facial, and gesture recognition. Robotics is one of the fields related to artificial intelligence. Robots require intelligence to handle tasks such as object manipulation and navigation.
How does artificial intelligence fit into businesses in 2019?
Virtual digital assistants
Digital assistants are provided in mobile devices and tablets. These devices have tools like voice search and facial recognition which help the customers by giving them a great customer experience. Businesses have incorporated these items into their mobile applications to optimize the services they offer to their customers.
Chatbots and customer experience
Chatbots are interactive agents found in company websites or applications. They are artificial conversation entities that take the customer through what the website or application offers. They have helped businesses give customers a personalized experience. These interactions also help the companies collect consumer feedback in a clever manner.
Prediction
Artificial intelligence is used by most businesses for predictive analytics. All businesses need to predict something at one point or the other an AI helps in reducing the cost of making predictions. A few examples of the predictions artificial intelligence can help with are;
- Forecast pricing chances of competitors.
- Suggest content for website visitors to read.
- Recommend items based on past purchase history.
The accuracy of the predictions given by AI depends on the accuracy of the data it is fed. Given poor data, it will make poor decisions.
Simplify simple tasks
When complex processes are automated, they tend to create business value by saving time and resources. For example, all the hours spent by the finance department wading through data from ERP, payment processing, and other systems, AI will take care of that. Employees will be left to make better strategic decisions as the busy work has been done by intelligent machines.
Despite all these achievements, many companies still do not fully trust artificial intelligence to manage their processes. The following are the challenges cited on the integration of AI to businesses
- It is hard to integrate cognitive projects with existing processes and systems. Most companies already have systems running and are reluctant to go through the difficult process of integrating artificial intelligence into their systems.
- Technologies and expertise are very expensive. The hardware and software to fully incorporate artificial intelligence are very costly.
- Managers do not understand cognitive technologies and how they work. Most managers do not trust the process of acquiring knowledge and business insight through predictions made by artificial intelligence and would rather use the traditional means of running a business.
- The number of people with the expertise in the technology is few.
- The danger of cyber-attacks. Organizations whose processes are fully automated by the use of AI risk the danger of a full collapse in the occurrence of a successful hack.
For companies to fully engage and enjoy the benefits of artificial intelligence it is important to look at AI in terms of business capabilities rather than technologies. The capabilities of automation are endless. The future is already here and it is important to engage it sooner rather than later. While it is expensive to invest in quality employees and quality technology, it is worth it. It can transform your business. It is time to start learning, testing, collaborating and incorporating AI across your business.