What are the benefits of Artificial Intelligence?

What are the benefits of Artificial Intelligence?

What are the benefits of Artificial Intelligence?

My last article looked at how Artificial Intelligence can help executives in the decision-making process.  For organisations, there are a several benefits that exist for using Artificial Intelligence, here are my top four:

  1. Spotting patterns and trends quicker than the human eye – speaking to a friend on the weekend who has recently purchased a healthcare AI company, explained to me that the algorithm he invested in will be spot finite elements within MRIs / cat scans and be able to spot things that humans might not see. Recently speaking to the Chief Data Officer at Specsavers, they are using AI and machine learning to spot such diseases as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s through historical data and algorithms studying the retina.  He even said that it might be possible to spot these diseases 10 years before they happen.
  2. Crunching data quicker and making decisions faster – another example where AI and machine learning helps where the human eye cannot calculate and spit out results quick enough is on aggregator sites. This is where a human cannot compute billions of rows of data to change the price of a flight in seconds.  In these cases, it’s best to use an algorithm to do this, as I haven’t enough fingers or toes to do such calculations! Netflix and Amazon can give us personalised suggestions because they have been using AI for quite some time now.  Although, I keep getting my daughters recommendations for My Little Pony!  Please stop Netflix!
  3. Helping run mundane and boring tasks – AI can take the boring and make it super exciting, that’s just because the algorithm feels nothing, nothing! In the long run, my hope is that AI will do the stuff we humans don’t want to do, so we can get back to the task of creating new things.
  4. Being more efficient – NTT Docomo in Japan is now using AI for a new taxi passenger pickup system. The system predicts future taxi demand and directs drivers to high potential locations, therefore, taking the guesswork out of where customers are, how the weather impacts pickups and having to drive around for hours to pick-up passengers.

Artificial Intelligence or “Cognitive Computing” as some like to call it, is here and will increasingly help humans make better decisions and become more efficient.  The feedback loop will always play a strong part of the story, and I think we humans will still need to teach the machines a thing or two.  Decision making capabilities will get better, and we as humans may well we see more than the machine so that we can help it learn.  I don’t think that’s the end of the human story, we will  keep creating new things, and more likely it will be the beginning of how we integrate ourselves deeper into the human-machine interface.  The hybrid is born!