Today, with technology, our lives are more complex than ever. There’s more to do in lesser time. Easy availability of information has intensified competition in every field. This has led to great pressure on getting things done quickly and most efficiently without burning through critical resources which are time, manpower or money. However, the complexities created by technologies can also be simplified with technology. In this case, artificial intelligence.
There are multiple benefits of chatbots. Artificial intelligence is nothing but computer programs that have the ability to analyse patterns in large data records, predict future scenarios and take suitable action, without any instruction.
It is not a new concept, in fact its been around since the 1950s, however artificial intelligence is finally able to spread its wings and take flight due to the processing capacity of modern computers having reached unprecedented levels (computing power was insufficient until a few years ago). Let us understand the benefits that artificial intelligence provides.
In Business
Aritificial Intelligence has empowered businesses to heavily optimise their functions. Basically, every function in business generates large amounts of data that can be analysed to identify areas of improvement. Artificial intelligence can autonomously analyse this data and provide several benefits across functions such as manufacturing or production, supply chain, product development, programming, sales, marketing, logistics, research, finance and accounting among others. The benefits are in the form of:
Process Automation
With artificial intelligence, an important process that consumes significant man-hours can be automated to improve consistency and accuracy while saving time, therefore boosting the efficiency of a process. Take for example, customer support function of any business.
Majority of the enquiries from the customers are similar in nature and can be categorised. For instance, a food delivery app may receive enquiries with respect to order summary, tracking of order, addition of items to the order, change of location or other such things that can be categorised.
Artificial intelligence can be deployed to handle such enquiries and provide suitable responses. This allows the organisation to deploy their manpower for more complex unstructured enquiries or even across other functions that need additional investment of manpower. Similarly, other functions where a process can be categorised.
Product Improvement
Products typically operate on a fixed rule based system. This means that all the users of a product get similar experience. However, when enhanced with artificial intelligence, this can be changed to provide a more customised experience.
Artificial intelligence can analyse the usage patterns and learn the preferences of the user, and accordingly optimise the performance of the user. Take the food delivery app example again.
Based on order history, the app can recommend restaurants that cater to the food preferences of the app. In another example, a photo software in a smartphone can beautify pictures taken by the phone’s camera, by intelligently analysing the picture elements and adjusting them to produce a perfect picture.
Human Support
Artificial intelligence can also be used to provide support to humans putting in an effort in a specific task. This can either be in form of carrying out the task in parallel to increase output, or work together with a human to enhance the output.
For example, in a factory, a Collaborative robot which is programmed with artificial intelligence can either work alongside a worker carrying out the same task as a co-worker, or, it can help the worker by fetching tools or parts from the warehouse as and when needed.
In another example, an artificial intelligence powered design software care make design suggestions to a product designer to help him/her complete the design task more quickly.
Business Strategy Development
Business strategy is usually developed based on the competency of an organisation and available technology and related possibilities. With artificial intelligence opening up new possibilities, new business ideas can be generated.
For example, artificial intelligence has made autonomous cars a reality. As a result, transportation solution providers are now planning to create fleets of autonomous cars for cab-hailing market.
Such cars are safer, more efficient and have lower running costs. In another example, software giants such as Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon have created virtual assistants Siri, Cortana, Assistant and Alexa. These virtual assistants have created a new business opportunity for home appliance and electronics providers, who can make their products compatible with these assistants for automated and planned operations, in-turn, creating a home automation business.
On a different level, artificial intelligence can help market researchers conduct large scale market surveys by deploying artificial intelligence powered online questionnaires. These questionnaires can adapt to the answers of the respondents and adjust the line of questioning to develop a deeper understanding of customer needs and mindset.
Also, the number of customers that can be reached a given time is much larger than what is possible using on-field surveys. Artificial Intelligence can also analyse the responses to generate strategic insights that are crucial to any business intending to understand its customer base for better business performance.
The above aspects are focused on benefits for the business world. However, every business eventually touches a human life one way or the other. Chatbots powered by Artificial Intelligence help us as individuals get answers to our queries quickly and accurately, in a language that we understand.
A food delivery app with artificial intelligence helps us locate new/popular restaurants serving the food that we like, that would otherwise be hard to find using traditional food guides. Smartphones with artificial intelligence driven cameras help us take a better picture, this helping us capture our moments in a much better way that look good forever.
Autonomous cars make our commute a lot more comfortable and safer, especially for women. virtual assistants literally act like our personal assistants, helping us schedule our day, reminding us of important events or meetings, or even turning off the lights after we go to sleep.
Conclusion
Most of us fear artificial intelligence because of dramatic Hollywood movies that depict it as a villainous entity that will take away our jobs and turn us into slaves. In reality, artificial intelligence will only help us enrich our lives by taking care of mundane repetitive tasks on its own and help us carry out more challenging tasks much more efficiently, thereby enriching both our work life and personal life.
