Jenn Taylor-Reynolds
Artificial intelligence at its core is intelligence demonstrated by machines. AI first surfaced as an academic discipline in 1956 and has made leaps and bounds since then. The AI that we’re most exposed to today is what’s considered narrow AI. Narrow AI is designed to perform a narrow task such as only driving a car or only conducting internet searches. The scope of AI is continuously expanding, and it has come to simplify or eliminate the work that some employees have to do to keep a business running. By changing the way businesses function, making certain processes faster, more accurate, and requiring less hands-on work, AI is driving the future of the way these entities operate. Here are ten of the ways AI is bringing business to new horizons.
Revolutionizing Social Media
Social media is widely used, and because of that, it is a handy tool for businesses. From understanding a customer base to pushing targeted ads straight to their screens, it just makes sense to jump on this bandwagon. AI can be applied here by being programmed with specific behavioral targeting methodologies. When a potential client begins to look for or talk about something online, an AI could comb through that content and decide to start pushing them advertisements about a particular business based on what they’re talking about or interacting with.
Predicting Customer Behavior
AI is currently being used in this way, but the changes that are coming up in the world of artificial intelligence are going to add depth to what AI can do for a business in this regard. As machine learning tailors itself to appear more human, it will be able to predict the behavior of actual humans better. Is this particular person willing to purchase your product? What are they looking for concerning customer support, switching services, or just looking around? A stronger AI will be able to predict these things to maximize the efficacy you have in meeting a customer’s needs.
Preventing Fraud
As the world innovates, crime comes with it. It’s a harsh reality that has affected many people throughout the world because they weren’t as protected from fraud as they thought. A business that can offer top of the line protection against any fraudulent activity is one that people are going to flock to. AI’s help to beef up security because they can be programmed to scan behavior and analyze it for any abnormalities; additionally, voice and facial recognition are things made possible by AI, and they will eventually play a role in how humans stay secure as opposed to fingerprints or PIN codes.
Customizing User Experience
Zac Johnson, an Internet Marketer, and Entrepreneur talked about how AI can help customize the user experience. He predicted that some AI’s will soon adapt to scan browser history, online shopping trends, and social profiles so that asking for names and contact information will be a thing of the past. Johnson predicts that the AI will be able to fill all of those blanks in on its own, which helps business create a perfectly tailored experience for each customer they are trying to serve.
Increasing Access to Support
Chatbots are a form of AI that people are likely familiar with by now. Several services use bots to answer customer questions and obtain feedback about particular products, services, features, etc. Bots will continue to improve in such a way that they can help customers with more complex problems whether there is anyone in the office or not. The data gleaned this way can be implemented into the existing CRM and help create more accurate customer profiles and provide vital information on where the business can improve.
Finding Better Candidates
Hiring is a daunting process for anyone because it is a big decision to have to make. On top of that, the process of screening applications and doing research into potential employees can take up a large chunk of time. AI will be able to speed that process up by processing the applications and flagging specific criteria that you have deemed important, marking people as unhireable if they don’t demonstrate the right experience on their resume, and so on. These software programs can make the first few steps go by a lot more quickly, allowing hiring managers and HR departments to invest their time into what is the most important such as interviews.
Improving Analytics
Businesses often collect more data than they have the time to process or even know what to do with because it’s undoubtedly important, but the exact application of this information might not be so clear. Software programs can categorize, organize, pattern, and analyze this information sometimes in a matter of seconds. These programs can then demonstrate where and why certain data is useful or significant and even tell you what it means and how to implement what you’ve learned. Some employees specialize in this area, but an AI can do so more efficiently.
Informing Trade Decisions
Machine learning algorithms are created to be smarter than we are when it comes to analyzing data and making predictions based on it. Software programs are becoming great tools in the area of making trade decisions because these programs can learn to interpret patterns that humans might not recognize, they can store and process more data so that there is a better historical influence over the predictions that it makes, and they do it much faster than a human being could ever imagine. This keeps businesses up to the minute when it comes to trade strategies.
Enhancing Security
AI is also incredibly useful for enhancing online security because of its ability to analyze and adapt faster than a human being tasked with doing the same. It can take days or weeks for a human to examine a data set and see where a threat is coming from, and then even more time to create a response to the threat. By that time, the damage has been done, and the threat landscape has drastically shifted once again. Software programs can analyze massive data sets all at once and immediately adapt to the threat based on what it finds, making everything much more secure in the long run.
Providing Insight
Data scientists are incredibly important players in the business world, but it may not be practical for a company to employ one full-time in-house. It may be difficult to find a contractor that is the best fit for the data that needs to be processed; and, let’s face it, the faster that this data can be processed, the more cutting-edge a business is going to be. As fast-paced as the world is, there is nothing more critical. With AI, companies can get the exact same insight but faster and considerably more easily accessible.
