Do Companies Need An Artificial Intelligence Strategy?

That artificial intelligence has had an enormous impact on the way business organizations conduct their affairs is already an undisputed fact.  In fact, the time has come for businesses of scale to seriously analyse the impact that artificial intelligence or AI is having on their businesses, so as to be able to optimally leverage its immense advantages. Rather than view it as a mere productivity or efficiency tool that they have to budget for, they should formulate an artificial intelligence strategy.

Advantages of Having an AI Strategy in Place

1.       Business Perspective- It is all very well to get enamored with new fangled terminology and think of inducting artificial intelligence technology into one's business process like everyone else seems to be doing. But unless one is able to dove-tail it to one’s strategic business objective, one would have spent a fair amount of money without much reason.

With all the talk about how the adoption of AI technology is extremely important if businesses are to stay profitable in the digital era, having a well thought out strategy about optimally leveraging AI is the crucial first step. They have to be able to determine the value that the implementation of AI imparts to their organization before they actually invest in it.

   

2.    Putting Data to Good Use- Making sense of the vast amounts of data that businesses come by is right up the AI street. Ensuring that you deploy AI to make big data work for you has to be part of your AI strategy. It will allow your business to make sense of huge amounts of information about your customers in an optimally efficient manner.

3.       Engaging with Your Employees-With all the bad press that AI gets as a job killer you need to use AI to empower and grow your manpower along with the business. Like all technology, AI is best used as an enabler than this indiscriminate disruptor. Remember we are talking about intelligence here, not brawn. A smart AI strategy will enable you to do just that.

4.       Artificial Intelligence Is All About Training- AI starts off with what may be termed bare algorithms, which in a sense acquire intelligence, only after receiving training, working with vast amounts of company data. This is something that many people who are thinking of going in for AI have no clue about. An AI strategy can help one obtain a better grasp of the implementation roll out.

5.       Learning to Organize AI- Important as proficiency in data management is for the successful implementation of AI,  the ability to organize it in a manner that people from different disciplines are able to work in tandem with AI experts is just as significant. To be able to manage such a diverse team will necessarily require business leaders to both develop a core understanding of how AI functions and make it relatable across the board.

6.       Learning to Synergize Humans and Computers- This calls for reorganizing a company’s organizational structure in a manner that it becomes flexible enough for people to work in consonance with machines. A change in the cultural values of a company, which will be necessarily accompany the introduction of AI, will be extremely challenging and something that will have to be managed with deftness and sensitivity.

7.       The Impact Of AI On Jobs- A favorite bugbear for opponents of AI is its perceived negative impact on jobs. In reality, AI is expected to have a  far more benign effect upon employment, though it will definitely lead to an evolution in the way jobs are performed. Most people would only need to prepare to take on a different role of deploying AI to help enhance a business's performance, rather than face the prospect of unemployment.  Having an AI strategy will help a business dispel any negativity that the planned adoption of AI technology might otherwise engender.

8.       Preparing For The Future- The rate of adoption of AI may not be all that right now, but it is growing exponentially and sooner rather than later it will become all pervasive across industries. Companies who have already formulated a definite strategy to incorporate it into their business processes will be at a definite advantage in the years ahead when AI is expected to transform our very society.

The coming decades will see businesses innovate in ways that will usher in unimaginable levels of efficiency and output-all thanks to AI. It is for companies to ready themselves for the exciting times ahead than fear the changes to come.

The Internet of things, artificial intelligence and robotics

Nothing is going to change the way we live our lives more than the Internet of things, artificial intelligence and robotics. While these technologies will make life a lot easier and businesses more efficient and profitable there is a huge flip side as well. This has to do with employment prospects and if some prominent scientists are to be believed artificially intelligent machines might one day turn on their creators and destroy all humanity.

The Internet of things is expected to connect people, data, processes and devices on a gargantuan scale by the end of the decade-a whopping 50 billion connections. Before one starts worrying about the prospects of humanity being at risk from a take-over by machines, one needs to figure out how the opportunities presented by the Internet of things are put to optimal use, which in itself will require some doing.

The biggest existential threat to us will not be from sci-fi movie like scenarios where artificially intelligent machines and robots will rebel against humans, but by the security vulnerability that this mass scale convergence could give rise to. A less than perfectly designed system could for example impact upon the whole network and lead to disastrous consequences on an unprecedented scale.

Considering that real artificial intelligence is presently at an infantile stage, it is rather silly to be tilting at wind mills when we worry about the danger it poses to humans. Let us learn to fully reap the benefits that the Internet of things, some rudimentary artificial intelligence and smartly evolving robotic technologies bring to us. When the time comes we will ourselves find the solution to any potential threat in the future. We always have.

In the meantime we need to prepare our youngsters to handle these emerging technologies as this will help them find employment in the times ahead. There will of course be job losses for some on account of the increase in all round automation, but there will be other opportunities aplenty for those who anticipate and prepare for the paradigm shift in the way businesses and organisations will conduct their affairs in the times ahead.  We are entering very interesting times indeed.