What are the biggest benefits of AI and ML use in business?

What are the biggest benefits of AI and ML use in business? First and foremost, the cost savings through automation. Additionally, the enhanced level of customer service provided by the use of AI and ML will be a huge competitive edge for a business. Every time a customer calls a service-provider, the answer and delivery can be improved with a stream of data being fed to it. This becomes beneficial when the business is inundated with call requests. But, there are also benefits for people. For example, a game-changing new development in creating AI algorithms is called “AlphaGo,” a program that beats the world’s most advanced Go champion within days. When Google launched it, their goal was to promote the AI field, but they have since added other uses to it. Today, we can use AI to train computers to excel at taking photos. The technology is growing quickly, and is even teaching us that the universe is full of intelligent life, not just humans. But, what about negative aspects of the development? Firstly, the ability to do evil. A noted technologist has been examining the impact of this potential for some time. Called the “Terminator scenario” it is concerned that AI will make decisions based on self-preservation, and will act without regard for human life. No AI system can be considered infallible and cannot make a good decision when it gets a negative response. So, imagine that a machine learned to self-terminate without human intervention or coaching. Or, suppose it had learned to malfunction because the business desired this. It’s almost impossible to envision any scenario where this could not happen. For example, imagine if a bot were to carry out a bomb-disposal job that would have resulted in the loss of human lives. Or, even a replacement for a human cashier in a shop. Will your customers still have to queue to get their purchases in the “AI Store”? What happens when the AI malfunctions? The answer is that the owners will be liable for the damage that occurs. However, the business may be covered under an insurance policy or the manufacturer’s warranties. In any case, it could be argued that the business’s employees have agreed to the consequences of the possible malfunctions. Perhaps one of the biggest questions is how would a human user interact with the machine? There is already an experience that shows this. Some newspapers now report on breaking news with a summary or analysis by an AI. However, when that machine begins to give its opinion, it’s then an AI with a voice, talking to a reader on the front page. That requires an intermediary between the computer and the human, who is a machine at that point. But it is a machine that gives the human the ability to distinguish between the opinion of the computer, and the very good news or article that the AI has found. There is a price that accompanies the use of the AI. There is a cost to consider, like any other technology. At what point will the technology become mature and more useable? It will certainly take time. That will mean years of education and promotion of the technology. The industry has already begun to deal with this. The development of the field is now a booming business. The estimated market value is over $60 billion for 2019. So, AI and ML technology will continue to grow in prominence and the process will continue to be accelerated. What is the cost? How can businesses make a bet on it? Can we teach an AI to think like us? It’s an unanswerable question. Today’s AI can read words, classify them, and learn to remember them, recall them from memory, understand context and apply them to the business. Yet, that is a small piece of the intelligent learning that humans take for granted. To look at intelligence from a different perspective is to view it in the way a human does. Humans do not have a human brain. They are born without a brain. But, if they were capable of self-learning, would they be alive? This is a view of a being that does not have access to information, to the past, or to the future. In this case, we know that the being could learn from the experiences and knowledge of others who knew things. It could then develop its ability to learn. This is our human experience of how an AI would be designed. It’s a way to look at the human experience of intelligence, and as one aspect of a being’s ability to learn. If this is the case, how could an AI ever think like us? An example would be a business that is developing an AI that makes decisions based on the influence of the owner. How could an AI look at the business the same way an owner would? It might think, “Why did the owner decide to increase that commission, and not reduce it? The owner is not an owner of the business. He does not care about it. The owner will only care about his own interest, which is the money he will make.” As we humans like to call this capability of an AI to apply the owner’s perspective, or point of view, it’s called “agency.” This is to be found in both the robot and the Siri-like AI that is teaching humans how to talk to it. The robot will carry out an assigned task as the master’s will. It can understand directions to an assigned place. But, it can do that even without any training. That’s because it is an AI and it understands. But, this is still a question that needs to be asked because the answer can only be understood by a being that has access to our past, present, and future. So, can the AI come up with its own plans and execute on them? This would be a form of agency. Today, it’s called a machine learning AI and it has the potential to learn. It can do this by using big data, and this will be more and more able to match our human abilities. The news of IBM’s “Project X” in the Financial Times in 2016 surprised us. The article noted that IBM and Toyota had developed a two-way data system, that allowed the cars to understand their drivers and to teach them about the roads. The AI vehicle had been able to use the ability to tell the driver of its planned actions, and it can now use that to reduce the average human driving speed by up to 21 percent. While humans may be surprised, an AI that learns through the use of big data is not. The example given was to reduce traffic congestion. But, the potential for all of the other applications will have a huge impact on the future of humans and robots. In any case, it will be interesting to watch the evolution of the process. It seems as though it will take years. That will be of huge benefit to AI technology, but the potential for misuse has always been a problem, and it will certainly not go away. Any predictions about the future? There are many predictions about the future. One that is often made is “Artificial Intelligence will become like an organism.” This means that the industry is based on the ability of the machine to learn, rather than the application of human thought and intelligence. So, we would see the introduction of systems to teach, guide, protect, and heal us. The impact of the technology could have huge benefits for humanity, but could also do harm if it went wrong. It is a gamble. One could believe that the process is not a straight line, but is instead a matter of learning and learning through the use of data, experience, and human thought. The study of the evolution of AI from an alternative point of view is a growing field that has been called the “intelligence explosion.” There are concerns that it could do bad things, but there is also the argument that it could do good. The debate is ongoing. Will it be rational? Will the process be evolutionary? Will it evolve in a way that humans control? Will it continue to develop in a way that is controlled? Or, will it continue to grow in an uncontrolled way? These are the questions that you would want to ask as a business manager when you are thinking of a bet on AI. The future of AI and ML use will be something that we all will have to live with. It could be a game changer. We just don’t know yet.