Data In the 21st century artificial intelligence (AI) has become an important area of research in virtually all fields: engineering, science, education, medicine, business, accounting, finance, marketing, economics, stock market and law, among others. The field of AI has grown enormously to the extent that tracking proliferation of studies becomes a difficult task. Apart from the application of AI to the fields mentioned above, studies have been segregated into many areas with each of these springing up as individual fields of knowledge [1].         

Literature Review

Research on artificial intelligence in the last two decades has greatly improved performance of both manufacturing and service systems. Currently, there is a dire need for an article that presents a holistic literature survey of worldwide, theoretical frameworks and practical experiences in the field of artificial intelligence. This paper reports the state-of-the-art on artificial intelligence in an integrated, concise, and elegantly distilled manner to show the experiences in the field. In particular, this paper provides a broad review of recent developments within the field of artificial intelligence (AI) and its applications. The work is targeted at new entrants to the artificial intelligence field. It also reminds the experienced researchers about some of the issue they have known [2-7].

Examples of Smart, AI-Enabled Products and Services

• Roomba robot vacuums: You know those cute little vacuum cleaners that look like a giant hockey puck? They use AI to scan the room, pinpoint obstacles and work out how much hoovering is needed based on the size of the room. They also learn and remember the most efficient routes around the room

• Twitter uses AI to identify hate speech, fake news and illegal content. In one six-month period, the platform removed nearly 300,000 terrorist accounts that had been identified by AI

• Instagram is using AI to fight cyber bullying and take down offensive comments

• Betterment robo-advisors: There are lots of fintech companies offering robo-advice these days, but Betterment are the biggest and one of the pioneers in the field. Robo- advisors are online financial advisors that use AI to deliver personalized financial advice in an accessible, cost-effective way. This financial revolution promises to open up financial planning to the masses

• Nest smart thermostats: If you’ve ever railed at the cost of your energy bills, this product might be for you. The smart thermostat monitors activity in your home and begins to understand the occupants’ behavior patterns. Then, based on what it knows about how you and your loved ones use the home, it dynamically adjusts the temperate to keep the home comfortable, without wasting energy.

Examples of Smarter Business Operations

• Predictive maintenance is helping companies repair, replace or service parts and machinery at the optimum time – before it breaks down. Siemens AG, one of the biggest railway infrastructure providers in the world, is one example of this in action. The company uses IOT and AI technology to improve the reliability of trains, repair assets before they break down, and provide rail operators with uptime guarantees

Taking a Strategic Approach to AI in Business

When you take a strategic approach like this, you can focus your AI efforts in the areas that will deliver the greatest value for the business. If you need help with any aspect of AI in your business then get in touch. I’ve worked with some of the world’s most prominent companies to create their AI strategies, and I’m here to help your business approach AI in a strategic way (Figure 1).

Scope of Artificial Intelligence in the Future of Business

In a nutshell, the scope of AI in business transformation is constantly growing, and there are no signs of it coming to a halt anytime soon. The future is definitely gravitating towards automation. Artificial Intelligence will be the driving force behind eliminating the human error factor from business operations. Personalization techniques will become powerful enough to predict customer needs with remarkable accuracy. It is expected that customer services chatbots will take over and provide help 24/7, allowing you to strategize for any possible outcome way ahead of time. Extensive and complex data sets are already being analyzed within a matter of minutes, and useful insights can be churned out more easily. AI has already changed the way we do business and it is going to accelerate operations in more innovative ways that will benefit entrepreneurs in the long run [8,9].

Knowledge representation (KR)

Knowledge bases are used to model application domains and to facilitate access to stored information. Research on KR originally concentrated around formalisms that are typically tuned to deal with relatively small knowledge base, but provide powerful reasoning services, and are highly expressive.

Expert system

The next spect of AI discussed here is expert system. An expert system is computer software that can solve a narrowly defined set of problems using information and reasoning techniques normally associated with a human expert. It could also be viewed as a computer system that performs at or near the level of a human expert in a particular field of endeavor [10].

Figure 1: Illustration concerning the relationship among the diverse fields of AI

Transforming eCommerce

A number of e-retailers such as Amazon are keen on exploring new solutions led by AI that can help cut costs and overhead. Many eCommerce businesses are leveraging the technology to gain a better understanding of their customers, generate new leads, and improve customer experience. For example, AI uses cookie data and offers customers highly personalized recommendations. How is it possible for the platform to determine what customers really need? This is done with the help of natural language processing (NLP) features, video, image, and voice recognition [11].

Artificial Intelligence and Digitalization

AI has been at the forefront of the digitalization of businesses. According to Dr. Amir Hussain, founder and CEO of Spark Cognition, “AI is kind of a second coming of the software”. By far, Artificial Intelligence solutions have demonstrated enhanced decision-making abilities as compared to other traditional software. The power of making decisions on its own gives the platform an edge over different technologies and solutions, allowing enterprises to perform increasingly complex tasks by the day [12].

Artificial Intelligence and Automation

AI is playing an integral role in automating and improving Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Usually, businesses rely on CRMs to manage teams and employees in order to avoid micromanagement. Incorporating AI into CRMs assists businesses with relevant updates on a regular basis, minus any human intervention. This setup also generates automatic updates to the resources in charge, ensuring that everything remains streamlined and under control. A self- correcting system layered on top of the management system takes the strain off project managers and improves the overall work lifecycle.

Artificial Intelligence and Personalized Business Services

Apart from consumer interaction, one can improve personalized services with the help of AI. For example, a corporation could send a personalized message to a customer concerning an outstanding payment or a new offer, once they are in close proximity to one of their offices. Let’s consider a few common scenarios. If you are near an insurance company, you could get an insurance-based offer. Or, if you are searching for a specific property, you could be suggested a few options available for purchase. As a restaurant owner, you may send a ‘deal of the day’ offer to individuals around your restaurant.

How Businesses Use AI Today

Artificial intelligence is already widely used in business applications, including automation, data analytics, and natural language processing. Across industries, these three fields of AI are streamlining operations and improving efficiencies. Automation alleviates repetitive or even dangerous tasks. Data analytics provides businesses with insights never before possible. Natural language processing allows for intelligent search engines, helpful chatbots, and better accessibility for people who are visually impaired.

Ethics in AI

Actually, cyber security has long been a concern in the tech world, some businesses must now also consider physical threats to the public. In transportation, this is a particularly pressing concern.

For instance, how autonomous vehicles should respond in a scenario in which an accident is imminent is a big topic of debate. Tools like MIT’s Moral Machine have been designed to gauge public opinion on how self-driving cars should operate when human harm cannot be avoided.

But the ethics question goes well beyond how to mitigate damage. It leads developers to question if it’s moral to place one human’s life above another, to ask whether factors like age, occupation, and criminal history should determine when a person is spared in an accident. Problems like these are why Esposito is calling for a global response to ethics in AI. “Given the need for specificity in designing decision-making algorithms, it stands to reason that an international body will be needed to set the standards according to which moral and ethical dilemmas are resolved,” Esposito says in his World Economic Forum post.

Artificial Intelligence is Everywhere:

Traditionally, we now live in the age of “big data,” an age in which we have the capacity to collect huge sums of information too cumbersome for a person to process. The application of artificial intelligence in this regard has already been quite fruitful in several industries such as technology, banking, marketing, and entertainment. We’ve seen that even if algorithms don’t improve much, big data and massive computing simply allow artificial intelligence to learn through brute force. There may be evidence that Moore’s law is slowing down a tad, but the increase in data certainly hasn’t lost any momentum.  Breakthroughs in computer science, mathematics, or neuroscience all serve as potential outs through the ceiling of Moore’s Law [13].

The Future

So, what is in store for the future? In the immediate future, AI language is looking like the next big thing. In fact, it’s already underway. I can’t remember the last time I called a company and directly spoke with a human. These days, machines are even calling me! One could imagine interacting with an expert system in a fluid conversation, or having a conversation in two different languages being translated in real time. We can also expect to see driverless cars on the road in the next twenty years (and that is conservative). In the long term, the goal is general intelligence, which is a machine that surpasses human cognitive abilities in all tasks. This is along the lines of the sentient robot we are used to seeing in movies. To me, it seems inconceivable that this would be accomplished in the next 50 years. Even if the capability is there, the ethical questions would serve as a strong barrier against fruition. When that time comes (but better even before the time comes), we will need to have a serious conversation about machine policy and ethics (ironically both fundamentally human subjects), but for now, we’ll allow AI to steadily improve and run amok in society.

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