In this article, we explore examples of how AI technologies have transformed our day-to-day lives and how we can prepare for continued transformation in the future.
Artificial intelligence (AI) used to be in the realm of science fiction, but while AI is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, it has been a fixture in day-to-day living for a decade or so. (Think Alexa. Think self-adjusting house thermostats. Think Netflix TV series recommendations. All of it’s AI.)
Nevertheless, it’s what AI has changed in the past few years – and its potential for reimagining the future within our lifetimes – that ought to get people really excited about the technology.
To better prepare ourselves for what’s coming next in AI, let’s look at some of the most recent manifestations of new AI applications.
AI Already Has Changed the World in Profoundly Important and Beneficial Ways
AI Tech in the Medical Field
Because AI-powered technologies are helping physicians decipher medical pictures such as X-rays, MRI, and computed tomography scans, they can make faster and more precise diagnoses. AI is adept at finding patterns in huge volumes of data, including medical data. This capability may let it integrate genetic and lifestyle data with environmental characteristics to help diagnose complex diseases. The machine learning (ML) techniques that AI technology can support also allow it to make quantitative readings that can accelerate diagnoses and improve their accuracy.
Artificial Intelligence for Maintenance
Companies are deploying AI and machine learning to perform predictive maintenance – i.e., to anticipate equipment failures before they happen. AL algorithms interpret data taken from machinery and sensors to detect patterns and abnormalities that frequently signal imminent breakdowns. For instance, an AI software applications developer recently developed AI machine learning models and used predictive algorithms that analyzed real-time operational data to help a manufacturer suffering a lot of equipment failures. The result was a 40 percent reduction in equipment downtime.
AI Improvements in Business and Marketing
It’s imperative that businesses promote their products and services to attract and keep customers, and AI is helping them do exactly that by changing how they market these offerings.
By analyzing voluminous quantities of customer data and delivering insights into buying patterns, the technology is helping companies customize their marketing campaigns and win more conversions. (Consider clothes shopping, where trained machine models can predict customers’ preferences and direct-ship clothes to their homes.)
Moreover, AI-powered tools such as chatbots, predictive analytics, and personalized e-mails make it possible for businesses to contact more prospects. By writing e-mails to different groups of customers or industries, AI can send out personalized communications that pinpoint the intended audience. That’s big potential bottom-line growth since e-mail marketing yields some of the highest marketing investment returns.
AI Tech and Transportation
Several years ago, we were seemingly on the cusp of making self-driving less rumor and more reality. While AI in cars remains largely experimental, it is making itself known on the roads. Cases in point: Motional, a cooperative venture between Aptiv and Hyundai, has deployed AI through three types of sensors – LiDAR, radar and cameras – to birth an operating commercial robotaxi service that has already given passengers 100,000 self-driven rides without a single at-fault incident.
Waymo, which had been Google’s foray into self-driving vehicles, is now an independent company whose 360-degree perception technology (It can detect people, vehicles and obstacles within 300 yards.) has logged more than 20 million autonomous miles in driverless vehicles.
This kind of sophistication in AI technology is being applied in an ever-expanding field of tech-heavy industries. Beyond creating AI-specific jobs, though, AI is also penetrating into lines of work that don’t bring AI immediately to mind but where AI-related skills can make people more efficient and productive and more responsive to the needs of their customers and work colleagues.
There is a Great and Growing Demand for AI Skills in Many Occupations
For some time now, AI has given rise to specific careers for which AI proficiency is mandatory, such as robotic specialists, cloud architects, and machine learning and natural language processing engineers. But as AI has become more heavily integrated into our daily lives, the need for AI specialists has spread into peripheral, non-technical occupations, too, such as attorneys, ethicists, project managers, business managers, and sales and marketing professionals.
Indeed, the demand for AI in non-tech sectors covers the likes of AI medical consultants who can analyze patient data; algorithmic traders in finance who can forecast market trends and quickly execute trades; customer experience specialists in retailing who deploy chatbots and virtual assistants to improve customer service; and entertainment-and-media-based content creators who use generative AI to invent lyrics, dialogue, music, art, and literature.
There’s even a place now for a do-it-yourself approach to AI generation, where ChatGPT has made it possible for people to design their apps and chatbots without having to do any coding. In January, Open AI launched the GPT store, a platform that will give paying users of ChatGPT a means to share their custom bots or download others at no cost.
DEI Is an Area Where AI Can Expand Business Opportunity
Any AI formats – including the latest and greatest, generative AI – are only as good as the data they capture and the analytics they apply to that data. In its formative years, AI all too often has harvested race-, gender- and otherwise-biased content whose outputs have blocked rather than fostered diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in the workplace and influenced bigoted assumptions elsewhere.
A few glaring examples are facial recognition software that doesn’t recognize darker skin tones, biased algorithms that wrongly predict recidivism rates, and hiring algorithms that discriminate against women and people of color.
Luckily, innovators have begun developing AI solutions that are associated with HR processes that are inextricably linked to DEI – such as acquiring, retaining and promoting workers – and to basic DEI objectives, including pay equity and parity, as well as representation in leadership positions.
One such pioneer, Diversio, has built an AI-supported analytics platform that taps into company HR data to make recommendations towards a “measurably inclusive” workforce. It also integrates with HR platforms to help companies monitor their DEI progress through benchmarking tools and “inclusion scores.”
That’s the kind of lead that businesses must follow today to keep bias out of AI algorithms and applications. AI can and should be a technical and moral application that brings new opportunities to all people, including women and other groups that have traditionally been underrepresented in business.
AI’s Reach Is Becoming All-Pervasive
The case for universal enthusiasm about AI is clear: not only is it delivering on its potential to re-invent all kinds of business professions to make life easier and more convenient for workers and empower them to serve their customers more effectively. It's also starting to level the workplace playing field, so to speak, by eliminating algorithmic bias so that race and gender no longer will be barriers to full participation in AI-related staff and managerial roles.
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