When you hear the phrase “artificial intelligence,” what comes to mind?
Most people think of HAL, the Terminator, or R2D2 and C3PO, and tend to equate AI with science fiction. Few people equate it with customer service or sales because it’s such a fantastic concept that it’s hard to reconcile it with everyday life.
Yet artificial intelligence is already here, and learning more as each day goes by. IBM’s Watson was only the beginning as now millions of AI bots are helping people in expanding capacities. From AIs that answer the phone and direct you to the correct extension to AIs that can troubleshoot your computer and more, artificial intelligence isn’t just for science fiction anymore!
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence has been created using algorithms that process data. As they are fed new data, they account for it in the algorithm. This results in a sort of learning process, where the AI gets smarter as it is given new information. They can be given parameters that create “personalities,” which can then help your customers with information or transactions, among other things. By finding and synthesizing information at faster rates, businesses save time and money, allocating their human resources to more complex needs.
Components that enable AI
AI has been enabled by several interacting components. The world wide web coupled with high-speed capability gives AI a place to perform. Mobile technology provides a need for AI, as people on the go have a demand for information that is accessed quickly. This takes a web of interactions, from accessing the data to interpreting it and providing answers based on the search parameters. Every time you do a voice search for a pizza place on your mobile device, millions of AIs communicate with one another to deliver your answers nearly instantaneously.
Data Analysis and AI
Because AIs can process data so quickly, they can scan for specific data at a much higher rate than humans can. Previously, the data that AI seeks would have been stored in file cabinets and company vaults. Today it is stored digitally, and AIs are like tiny digital filing clerks that can move and think at lightning speeds. This frees your human employees to handle more complicated problems that the AIs can’t.
Customer Service/Virtual Assistance
Have you ever had a service get interrupted in the middle of the night, after customer service hours? The only alternatives to this problem for businesses are to have employees available 24-7, or to use AI chatbots. A good development team that is collecting and using data from interactions with their bots can keep the bots updated, allowing them to “learn” and “mature” to more easily address the needs of users.
Data Modelling
Data relates to other data, and AI allows us to manipulate data in whatever way comes to mind. We use data to make predictions and study trends, but AI can give us unlimited options for studying and interpreting the data we have. This can give us new angles to explore and perhaps even usher in a few breakthroughs.
Businesses that take advantage of artificial intelligence will have an edge as we make our AIs smarter. As each AI and its development team learn how it is applied, it gets faster and more efficient. Any business would love to have an efficient team that gets instant results, and with AI, that is becoming more and more available!
