Artificial intelligence (AI) has infiltrated our daily lives and is not going away anytime soon. From ordering groceries on an Amazon Alexa to deep machine learning used to detect fraud in bank accounts, it’s everywhere. AI has become a supporting tool to human intelligence, it finds patterns we can’t, and ultimately make our lives easier. Besides easing our daily activities, AI technology is changing the way businesses run and transforming companies.
AI has three main business needs that it supports: automating business processes, gaining insight through data analysis and engaging with customers and employees.
Automating Business Processes With AI
Process automation is a very broad title that encompasses many forms of AI. The most common form would be the automation of digital and physical tasks, usually used for financial and administrative work. AI acts like a human, inputting and absorbing data from multiple IT systems to perform other tasks. Some of these tasks would be reading legal documents and contracts, replacing lost credit cards, recording data from emails and call centers, or charging people via billing systems.
This technology is easy to implement, fairly cheap and has a high return on investment. Unfortunately, it’s usually not programmed to learn and improve upon itself over time as more advanced AI is capable of. Being able to automate these simple business processes streamlines companies day to day office work. It provides more time for employees to work on complex, important projects, rather than spending time doing busy work.
Gaining Insight Through Data Analysis
One of the most beneficial aspects of AI is that it can detect patterns in seas of data that humans would never be able to recognize. Machine learning applications can detect these complex patterns, then analyze them to be able to predict what a customer is most likely to purchase, identify credit fraud and insurance claims fraud, analyze warranty data to identify safety and quality problems in automobiles and other manufactured products, and automate targeted digital ads.
Machine learning applications are much more advanced than the automation of digital and physical tasks. It also differs from basic analytics as it’s more data-intensive and detailed. It’s ability to detect and utilize new data will improve over time. Machine learning tries to mimic the human brain so that it can recognize images and speech.
Engaging With Customers and Employees
Chatbots, intelligent agents and machine learning are all ways to use AI to engage with customers and employees. A few ways that businesses utilize these technologies is with 24/7 customer service call centers. internal sites for answering employee questions about IT, employee benefits, etc., product/service recommendation systems for retailers including language or images, and health treatment recommendation systems that create customized care plans for patients.
Businesses have been utilizing these cognitive engagement tools for employees to be able to have an easier time helping customers. Eventually, the customers will be able to communicate directly with the AI bot. There are still a lot of flaws with these bots, certain levels of understanding that humans have, bots cannot reach. When a customer asks a very detailed, specific question, it’s not guaranteed that the bot will be able to give the answer that the customer wants. As a result of these flaws, bots will not be a threat to human jobs for a long time, although they are a huge help to making human jobs easier.
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