Thanks to AI, the business world is about to get turned on its head. Artificial intelligence isn’t just a byword for Siri anymore. It’s a legitimate and powerful force that’s undergone tremendous advances in the past few years and has the potential to utterly reshape the world.
Business is no exception. Artificial intelligence could lead humanity to a post-scarcity economy in which machines meet people’s needs automatically, without the need for labor, or even a pricing system.
AI is the ability of machines to perform tasks that normally require human intelligence, such as understanding language, recognizing images, making decisions, and learning from data. This new cognition is enabling these systems (and the businesses they support), to do things faster and cheaper with the click of a button.
AI is already having a transformative effect on multiple industries, including healthcare, education, entertainment, and finance. However, it has the potential to go much further than that. Raw intelligence could potentially solve any problem that is physically possible to solve, eventually remaking the world atom by atom.
If that sounds far-fetched, then consider the purpose of science. The entire point of the enterprise is to use human intelligence to discover more things about how the world works. Over the centuries, various breakthroughs have enabled people to go from living in wooden huts to building skyscrapers and flying across the entire planet in mere hours.
AI could advance that progress significantly. A machine with near-infinite knowledge and reasoning capabilities could make fundamental discoveries rapidly on the technological frontier, enabling it to devise solutions to problems previously believed to be impossible. Systems could remake the global economy from the ground up while solving issues like pollution, CO2 in the atmosphere, and plastic in the ocean. The discovery of new chemistry, biology, and material sciences could enable humanity to implement solutions hitherto thought impossible, saving the planet from the impending disaster many predict.
These changes might seem futuristic. But it is in fact exactly what is happening now. AI is going exponential. And that means that AI is not only getting faster and smarter but also more accessible and affordable. Advances on multiple fronts, including hardware, software, data, and algorithms, are making this shift possible, with a general intelligence or superintelligence likely to arrive by the end of the decade.
For firms, AI is no longer a niche technology. It is not like electricity, as Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai eloquently puts it, meaning every business should be using it.
How Will AI Transform Business?
AI will transform business in several ways.
Augment Human Capabilities
First, AI will augment human capabilities. It will enable people to perform faster and better by providing a plethora of insights, personalizations, and recommendations.
For example, educators will use AI to help them tailor lessons to the needs of their students and professional learners. Clinics will use software to assist in disease diagnosis. And marketers will use these systems to optimize their campaigns and reach more people.
Improve Marketing And Value Propositions
AI will also dramatically improve marketing and value propositions. Businesses will create new products and services that were simply impossible historically. For example, AI can help generate realistic images, videos, and sounds, create novel art and music, design new drugs and materials, and discover new knowledge and patterns. Businesses can get the properties they want with nothing more than simple verbal prompts.
Disrupt Existing Industries
AI will also change how businesses operate from the ground up. It will adjust the status quo and help companies gain a competitive advantage by offering super cost, speed, and convenience compared to standard operations.
For example, AI can help automate tasks and processes. Companies that implement early will be able to get more done per hour worked, improving productivity dramatically. Workers might be able to finalize a week of copy or email writing in an hour or less with the right tools.
Firms will also optimize resources and operations. An explosion in AI-driven field service management and business intelligence will make it possible to coordinate teams like never before. Smart assistants will direct contractors to the most valuable tasks and the things they need to do next.
AI will also enhance customer experience and loyalty. Immediate chatbot responses to sophisticated queries will improve trust and attention, helping firms break the buying cycle and prevent clients from approaching competitors.
Lastly, AI will enable new forms of collaboration and communication. Embodied robots will perform tasks alongside humans, reducing the need for physical labor and enhancing the automation of various places of work, including stores, warehouses, factories, and airports.
Raise Ethical And Social Issues
Perhaps the most interesting way AI will change business is by raising various ethical and social issues. Advanced artificial intelligence has the power to affect all areas of human life, including privacy, security, and basic dignity. For example, AI can cause bias and discrimination, as shown by Tay, Microsoft’s 2016 chatbot. It can also infringe on personal data and identity by collecting and then evaluating information specific to an individual.
An even more sinister development could be AIs that manipulate people’s emotions and behavior. Machines that pass the Turing test could potentially convince users to fall in love with them or carry out undesirable acts.
Businesses, therefore, will need to adopt AI safety policies. They should prove to their audiences that their tools are safe and can’t be used for abuse.
Wrapping Up
In summary, AI is a tool that could potentially solve all business problems (and human problems requiring the application of intelligence). While it might not offer spiritual transformation, the impending intelligence explosion is likely to remake every aspect of life, from how we work, to what we do with our time.
In essence, AI has the potential to be a silver bullet. A sufficiently advanced computer program could plot an optimal trajectory for humanity, operating the means of production while solving scientific issues standing in the way of sustainability.
For businesses, it is an exciting time. With AI, they can do more with less.