AI has been around for a long time, but more than ever before, businesses are tapping into the incredible potential for artificial intelligence to make game-changing differences in their business. The benefits are vast and expansive, with opportunities for automation, powerful data-driven insights, personalization, and greater cyber security amongst many others.
In this piece, we will introduce you to the latest generation of AI solutions, how it can greatly benefit your business and enhance its capabilities, explore how the regulations around AI may develop over time and how businesses can adapt to leverage AI in a compliance-friendly way.
AI Adoption Is Gathering Pace: Businesses Should Embrace It
In whichever area you look, AI is making a profound impact. Marketing, operations, cyber security, and software development are increasingly using AI-driven tools, making processes faster, more automated, and intelligent.
Before we get into the benefits that AI can offer businesses, let’s take a moment to define AI and why the latest generation of AI is driving momentous changes in business.
AI (artificial intelligence) is the simulation of human-like intelligence in technology. Decades ago, this took a rigid and fixed form. For example, imagine you are creating an invoice processing program. You can build that software to scan for certain kinds of data in an invoice document and to approve it or flag it up for review based on pre-defined criteria. This example illustrates what is termed hard AI, which is programmed with explicit instructions based on logical rules.
In the past, this has enabled automation through defined processes, but where AI was not so good, was under conditions of uncertainty and complexity. This is where the latest advances in AI are driving game-changing differences for businesses, with this kind of AI being the focus of our article.
The latest kind of AI is driven by machine learning (ML), which is a subset of AI, but one that is at the leading-edge of the field. Machine learning algorithms are trained on instructions and vast datasets to make increasingly accurate judgements. Under conditions of uncertainty, this kind of AI can make powerful correlations and predictions between variables in a dataset that many humans would miss or not be able to make as quickly.
One example of ML-AI is face-recognition technologies which can be used for user verification processes; an uploaded form of documented ID is compared with a photo that is immediately taken by a user attempting to create an account. The algorithm will be able to contrast and reconcile the facial data of both to arrive at a confident decision that the ID and picture of the user show the same person.
The core value of ML-AI at a general level, is that wherever it is applied, it can expand the intelligence, decision-making, and problem-solving abilities of an organization by simulating the softer aspects of human intelligence. It’s rather like adding additional brains into an organization, except they can create solutions and solve problems at an unfathomably faster pace!
This is why it is essential that businesses leverage AI going into the future; many can’t afford not to do so as their competitors will steadily adopt it and gain a competitive edge.
The Benefits of Applying AI in Your Business
AI can add deep value to your bottom line, innovation, and competitiveness. It can also unlock new forms of value that can be leveraged into new products and services for customers. Here are some of the many ways that AI can lower costs, drive value and empower growth.
- Enhanced Data Analysis: Data is the lifeblood of many businesses. ML-AI can process vast amounts of data from various channels quickly to identify patterns and trends that can be leveraged to exploit new opportunities. These insights can drive decision-making in various areas, including marketing, operations and finance amongst others.
- Personalized Marketing: Likewise, ML-AI can be deployed to analyse customer behaviours and preferences to deliver personalised marketing campaigns that give the right approach, tone and offering to each unique customer based on their data, unlocking higher conversion rates.
- Improved Customer Service: AI chatbots and assistants are able to provide 24/7 support that can handle customer queries and offer personalised recommendations. This adds a valuable, ever-accessible layer of customer support that improves satisfaction and response times.
- Streamlined Operations: AI-driven tools are able to partially or fully automate tasks, especially manual ones, and can offer personalised recommendations that help users complete tasks faster and more effectively.
- Fraud Detection and Cyber Security: AI-ML is being widely used in the cyber security industry to spot unusual patterns in organisational networks and to thwart potential cyber threats before they have a chance to make an impact.
- Recommendation Engines: AI can recommend products or services based on user profiles and data; this is being used in areas such as retail, e-commerce and Software-as-a-Service (SaaS).
These are just some of the areas where AI is making an invaluable difference to businesses and customers around the world. Next, let’s consider how AI can fit into regulated industries and how it may be regulated in the future.
Regulating AI: Regulated and Non-Regulated Industries Now and in the Future
AI is being used in a range of industries, operating under both lock-and-key conditions, as well as in ‘wild west’ environments; in either case, businesses should be forward-looking about how they will apply AI in a regulation and ethics-friendly way to avoid trouble further down the line.
In the end, tech is about empowering the lives of people, and so regulations around AI are focused on protecting people most of all. As a rule of thumb, businesses should strive to apply AI in a way that is ethical and protects personal data.
In more heavily regulated industries such as healthcare and financial services, AI must be applied in a way that robustly protects the data and interests of people. For example, in healthcare, Internet of Things (IoT) devices need to comply with strict regulations that protect patients’ data and efficacy. Whilst in finance, AI algorithms must be scrutinised to ensure they do not manipulate or de-stabilise financial markets.
In less regulated industries, the importance of data protection and privacy is still at the fore. Any AI technology that processes data will need to comply with GDPR (the General Data Protection Regulation). Whilst there is more room for experimentation in less regulated sectors, businesses should self-regulate their use of AI and data to ensure it is ethical and will comply with frameworks and regulations that may arise in the future.
An area in the creative industries that showcases some of the tensions that will create more AI-regulations in the future, is the issues around the use of intellectual property by AI to create artwork and designs. Governments across the world are also collaborating on creating global frameworks for the usage of AI to ensure this global technology is properly regulated across the globe.
We anticipate a rise in both comprehensive national and global frameworks for applying AI, which will have a kind of elasticity that is similar to GDPR, which considers the context of organizations and thus how comprehensive their data-protection measures should be. To stay ahead of the curve, we recommend applying AI in an ethical, compliance-friendly way. For example, organisation could focus on demonstrating how they collect the data that they feed into their algorithms, how it is protected, and show that it is being used explicitly and purely for its intended purpose(s).
AI Is More Than Business Process Automation
A go-to technology for businesses seeking to use AI is Business Process Automation (BPA) tools, which can automate processes based on defined rules. While useful, the limitation of this tool is that it draws on the traditional form of AI which cannot leverage the dynamic and intelligent features of AI-ML, which extends human-like capabilities into many more areas and with a lot more speed.
With the right technology partner, businesses can exploit BPA and ML-AI tools to catalyse their growth through intelligence insights, predictions, and personalised suggestions that deliver unprecedented value to clients and customers.
Get a free 1-2-1 AI alignment session with Everon
Feeling inspired by to implement AI in your business, but not sure how and where? Get a free 1-2-1 AI alignment session with Everon. In this session, we’ll help you to identify and get started with implementing game-changing AI tools in your business that unlock its competitive edge. Are you ready to embrace the future? Book your free consultation here.