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Artificial Intelligence: What It Means for You!
AI: The Unstoppable Force Reshaping Our World – Are You Ready?
Great insights in this blog written by Trevor Lovegrove
Overview
Artificial Intelligence (or AI) will profoundly impact all aspects of our lives, just like the birth of the Internet, the creation of social media, and the building of the first computer.
While the present set of tools (ChatGPT, Bing AI, etc., to name but a few) seems fantastic, it is just the beginning! The power in these tools is that they have access to huge datasets to collect information and then do the “grunt” work to extract, compile, curate, and articulate a response for the user based on the characteristics you can program it with.
Most importantly, these technologies can “learn ” and adjust their behavior given new information.
Whether you are a CEO, an AR manager, or a customer service agent, AI will impact you in some way.
Like all technological innovations, the key is to educate yourself on the benefits and to understand the constraints of any transformational change that will impact our professional and personal lives existentially.
These platforms are already being tailored to meet the needs of specific industries and job functions, and there will be more. So, how do businesses react to this latest technological marvel? Before we delve into that – let’s look at how AI was born.
So….how was AI born?
In fact, AI has been around a long time—back to the first half of the 20th century, in fact—yes, that’s right—older than me! I will not bore you with all the details, but if you are a history geek, I have provided a link to this great Harvard University paper that gives you the background to the Artificial Intelligence story.
And then what happened?
So why have we not heard about AI until now? Like many great ideas, turning a concept into reality takes a lot more work.
– The initial computers could do what you told them but could not remember what they did.
– Computers were enormously expensive (think what you paid for a computer just 20 years ago and compare it to computer prices now)
– Capabilities in terms of computing power and available memory have exploded
– Connectivity was sooooo SLOW! Imagine running the internet with 1200 kbytes/second!
– Big data is now a thing!
One little-known fact is that in 1997, reigning world chess champion and grandmaster Gary Kasparov was defeated by IBM’s Deep Blue, a computer program that plays chess. This was AI at work!
Over the last ten years, our experience with AI has grown, especially in specific industries such as technology, banking, marketing, and entertainment. We are now seeing AI go retail and support other industries. This expansion is being fed by exploiting “big data” and our capabilities to process vast amounts of data through the internet.
What’s next?
So, what is the future? Industries will see AI intrusion into their world. The legal and education sectors are already hitting the headlines. The transport sector will see the reality of self-driving cars, trucks, planes, and trains in the next 20 years (at a conservative estimate). Medical diagnostic advances are going to see exponential shifts. Law enforcement used to monitor activity through cams—now they can recognize you. This technology will only expand quickly using AI’s “learning” capabilities.
The list continues and will grow as innovators focus on this latest phenomenon.
As further advances in algorithmic technology occur, we will see vast improvements in the range of responses and applications AI can be applied to.
If we try and look beyond 20 years, further advances would be pure speculation.
What are the buts?
Think of AI as a force of nature
King Canute was an 11th-century English king best known for commanding the tide not to break upon his land. He was not actually trying to stop the tide but rather to demonstrate to his courtiers that he was not all-powerful and that even a king could not command the forces of nature.
If a King understands that AI cannot be stopped, why should we think we can? Major challenges need to be addressed, but we need to embrace technology to resolve them. Hoping it goes away, if we close our eyes, will not stop the wave from crashing over us.
What about ethics?
Ethical considerations are sometimes seen as an optional extra. Still, artificial Intelligence will profoundly affect our lives, so ethical considerations must be at the forefront of any product sold and purchased. The three critical areas that come to mind are transparency, accountability, and open source. I am sure bad actors are already thinking of ways to weaponize AI, meaning we all need to be more concerned about the sources of information. If you want to read more about AI ethics, click here.
What about Privacy?
Data privacy has become a much more challenging subject for companies and individuals. New laws enforced in the EU have significantly changed the paradigm, but more must be done to ensure organizations sufficiently protect their sensitive data. Social media platforms have come under criticism for monetizing their users’ personal data. Facebook has tried to respond by limiting data to political organizations, which will limit the flow of misinformation. These considerations are only exacerbated by Artificial Intelligence. This article by the Brookings Institute might give you food for thought.
What about regulation?
Regulation is usually seen as good – unless it applies to me. Unfortunately, regulation is always hard to create, and legislators usually don’t have the expertise to regulate successfully. Social media is a particularly thorny issue. I am all for the First Amendment, but deliberately infecting social communication channels with false information to rewrite history, for instance, is unacceptable. Writing strong and effective regulations without harming the free flow of communication is also an issue. This challenge seems too large for our legislators to deal with thoughtfully. Now apply that to AI and whoa – I shudder to think.
So how does it affect me?
Whether you are a CEO, an AR manager, or a customer service agent, you will be impacted by AI in some way or another, both professionally and personally, as a consumer of products, services, and information.
Like all technological innovations, the key is to educate yourself on the benefits and to understand the constraints of any transformational change that will impact our professional and personal lives existentially.
Talking about the platform
So, you want to explore how AI can help your business. You have heard about the new technology, the bots, the capabilities to create documents, etc.
This technology is transformational – give it the respect and attention it deserves.
At this time, most of these engines are fundamentally the same. Some are generic and have been attached to search engines to enhance your search experience; others are becoming more customized to meet specific industries or functions.
Whatever you are looking for, first fully educate yourself on the challenges surrounding AI. Then, follow these simple guidelines.
– Fully explore how embedding AI into your present ecosystem would change your business model. Ensure you build a collaborative team to examine all aspects of your business interactions, both internal and external. In any analysis, remember the impact on your customers, partners, employees, and stakeholders.
– Create your standards of behavior (your values or ethics statement if you like). This is necessary even though there may be sound regulations.
– Remember that AI is a tool like every other technical innovation. So when thinking about how to use this technology, think about how it can benefit your employees, make the customer experience better, and improve your bottom line
– AI depends on data – vast amounts of it – not all that data will be owned by you so ensure you understand what you are using. The more data you can access, the more reliable, accurate, and destructive it can be. Data sourcing validation will be absolutely vital. Transparency about those sources is critical.
– A Trusted IT partner is always vital to provide the expertise to support the implementation program, but it will have a different structure than normal—very heavy on data engineering and integration specialists.
Finally, though…. the impact on people
Often, we get lost in programs that envelop a whole organization.
Fundamentally, organization ecosystems are built of people, and AI will affect different business functions differently. AI will shape your relationships with customers, partners, stakeholders, and employees.
Change can be scary, and AI is fundamentally transformational, so how should we view it? Is it a threat or an opportunity? It is actually both!
If you have made it so far through this blog, I want to talk to you and get your insight on what you think the impact of AI would be for 2 scenarios:
– How will AI impact your industry
– How will AI impact your function
I will publish some questions over the next few weeks to let you answer directly!
I’m looking forward to hearing your thoughts, and then I’ll publish the aggregated results!
I am also looking for volunteers to be interviewed for more in-depth discussions, so if you are interested in volunteering some of your valuable time, please click this link and complete the contact form.
To learn more, schedule a time to chat using the link below, and our team of experts will connect with you to discuss your needs.
For more information contact
Domain Technology Group
867 Berkshire Blvd., Suite 104
Wyomissing, PA 19610
610-374-7644 x7005