Picture this – a robot or machine that can tidy your clothes cupboard JUST the way you like it, or serve every member of your house their ideal beverage specific to them, how awesome is that?! This would make your life so much easier right? Well, these are products of Artificial intelligence (AI).
Artificial intelligence (AI) is the collective term for various technologies that work together allowing machines to act intelligently in an attempt to simulate human cognitive behaviour, which AI seems to seamlessly do! Intelligence with regards to AI, is a measure of a machine’s ability to perceive their surrounding environment and take action accordingly, including, solving problems and understanding natural language. Isn’t it mind blowing how this seemed like such an unrealistic future many years ago, versus seeing AI now taking over completely!
AI consists of different technologies such as machine learning (ML), which we’ve covered in a previous blog, and natural language processing (NLP). Each technology is applied in its own domain to perform tasks, such as analytics, prediction, automation and classification. In general, AI can refer to any task that a machine or computer system performs that usually requires human intelligence, such as, decision making, anomaly detection, object identification and solving complex problems. AI can ultimately make it easier for businesses to achieve their strategic goals through maximising their profits, minimising their costs and enhancing customer experiences.
There are two main classifications of AI, weak AI and strong AI:
Weak AI, otherwise known as Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI), refers to AI that is only able to perform a set of specific tasks limited to a certain area. Weak AI automates time-consuming and repetitive tasks that are usually performed by humans, such as analysing data. Some examples of weak AI include the very popular IOS and Google assistants – Siri, Alexa and the incredible new Tesla self-driving cars (self driving cars?? WHAT?)
Strong AI, also known as Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), is evolutionary AI in which machines are capable of thinking, solving problems and making decisions in a similar way to humans. Unlike weak AI which simulates human cognition, strong AI actually possesses it. Strong AI is a single system that is able to solve many different problems. It is still a new and developing field whereas weak AI is currently used in many businesses to solve different problems.
AI is super functional and helpful as it can be easily integrated into everyday business processes from managing workflows to identifying trends. There are many use cases for AI in any business potentially transforming a business’s strategic alignment and creating new growth opportunities for the business. One of the most useful and important features of AI is that it can be used to improve customer services by using virtual agents to offer customers support and allow them to log queries at any time of the day, quickly and with ease.
Another way AI is used is to automate the collection and analysis of data and optimally allocate resources for various tasks. Some examples of how AI is changing the game in certain sectors are such as in supply chain and logistics businesses, AI can be used to optimise the logistics network/route, and perform image recognition to find items in a warehouse. In a manufacturing business, AI can be used to automate production lines where mundane tasks are being performed, thus allowing workers to focus on more complex tasks as opposed to labour-intensive tasks. AI can be used to perform fraud and anomaly detection, easily identifying unusual cases and notifying businesses immediately so that the necessary action can be taken. With regards to a business’s data, AI can be used to predict future performance and assist a business in managing and analysing their data to improve their overall performance. In marketing and advertising, AI can use data to identify customer behaviour trends to automate offerings and perform routine marketing, and that’s just naming a FEW!
AI is an incredible development in the business world and by incorporating AI into your business, you gain a competitive advantage by saving time through using automation and minimising costs incurred by optimising workloads. Using AI can transform your overall business performance leading to higher levels of efficiency and enabling you to make informed business decisions much faster!
Contact us today to put you in touch with some of our incredible AI solutions and suggestions according to your needs and industry! web@piidigital.co.za
