This article was written by Abhishek Ray, pursuing the Training Program to Crack the Independent Directors’ Exam Course from Skill Arbitrage, and edited by Koushik Chittella.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Artificial intelligence refers to non-human intelligence. While most of the century’s humans have been known to be the supremely intelligent species living on earth, in today’s world, this does not seem to hold much truth. The challenger is no other living species with flesh, blood, and DNA, but non-living things known as machines. Of course, the challenger has been created by the veteran, which makes it all the more interesting. Humans have been by nature sceptical towards changes and new technology. A very fresh memory for us was the challenges faced by senior team members when they faced the transition from paper to computers. From the telephone to the television to the elevator, most of the things that have made it to our essential list faced a lot of apprehensions and doubts in the beginning. As per records and evidence, AI was conceptualised way back in the 1950’s; however, the real progress has happened in the last decade.
Now that AI has already found a place in our lives, sometimes we do not realise its presence. The curated content on Netflix based on your search and like patterns is the work of AI for you. AI will be valuable to the future of business across the length and breadth of its ecosystem. From helping customers with initial information about a product as a digital assistant to complex data analytics in environmental sustainability by analysing how much solar power a factory needs and optimising power consumption by automating electricity consuming devices and machines, it will help businesses by predicting maintenance required for the equipment’s there by avoiding sudden shut downs and disruptions in the production process. From boardrooms to retail shops, artificial intelligence is already rewriting the rules of the game and is well poised to shake the very foundation of how corporations have operated and competed till now.
Exploring the impact of artificial intelligence on businesses
The impact of artificial intelligence can be huge and can be noticeable in the following ways:
Automated process
Process has been the backbone of successful business. The more robust the process, the higher the success due to the high level of efficiency and minimum downturn time, all leading to higher customer satisfaction. But with process comes more and more repetitive tasks, increasing non-skilled manpower hours and thereby increasing the chances of errors. With artificial intelligence, these repetitive tasks are being automated. Business transformation shall be witnessed with traditional repetitive tasks being completed at lightning speeds and higher rates of accuracy. Consider the onboarding of employees. In industries with a high level of attrition and continuous hiring, the onboarding part becomes a repetitive job for the human resources department. Imagine this process getting automated. It has crossed the point of imagination and is now a reality, transforming businesses. In the past decade, we have witnessed the increase and refinement of chatbots. What they do essentially is get millions of customers connected to the company at the same time, be it an initial product inquiry or registering service calls. Traditionally, a customer would rely on connecting with a sales representative for the most basic query, with a risk for the company of losing a potential customer due to a non-response or delayed response from the sales representative. That’s a tremendous transformation for businesses with the advent of artificial intelligence.
Faster and better-informed decision-making
The future of business decision-making rests in automated and augmented business decision-making, where the beauty lies in processing vast amounts of data and identifying patterns that elude the human eye. The outcome of data analytics is not clouded by human emotions and biases. Typically and traditionally, arriving at a strategic business decision would pivot on data and subsequent analysis from multiple functions, keeping in mind the dynamic external and internal environment. Arriving at a desired decision would require a huge amount of data processing with the highest level of accuracy, which is diluted more and more with human layers involved.
A simple example would be an FMCG company that needs to take the call to reintroduce the soap brand, which was a success back in the 90’s. This needs a lot of past historical marketing data combined with the current trend analysis to see whether and where it fits. Now this organisation has a mid-level executive responsible for providing input on a major demographic’s acceptance level for this soap during the 1990s. Now this person is not a very satisfied employee of the company, looking for opportunities outside, which suggests his motivation and focus on his job. Also, this person has first-hand information about his father’s bad experience, as he didn’t like the lavender smell and had told his son that the soap was not so popular amongst his circle. So, a negative input goes to the strategic team, which is a highly distorted analysis based on no data at all. This can be just one such scenario, and one can imagine the number of leaks that this whole system may have, which will ensure that the desired result is not achieved. AI would give CXO’s pure inputs based on vast amounts of data analysed in no time, making their decision-making faster and more efficient.
Supporting content creation
From topic ideation to research and drafting content, artificial intelligence can do it all in the blink of an eye. Traditionally, businesses have had to invest a lot of time in content generation. Humans take a lot of time to curate articles and content, as it is a laborious process. Researching itself is a huge task, followed by drafting and proofreading. It is to be noted that content created by humans may come with emotional and empathetic biases. After putting in so much effort, more often than not, the desired result is missed. Without proper content optimisation with related key words, the content does not stand out in the search engine results. Thereby not reaching the target audience. Articles need to be regularly updated to keep them relevant, which is very easily lost with human handling, while automated processes can take care of this easily. All these automated processes are set to transform the world of business, with relevant, updated content readily available.
Cybersecurity
With the ever-expanding information technology and digital world, businesses are highly dependent on cloud computing and digital platforms. While this has and will reduce lead time and significantly increase efficiency for businesses, it also exposes them to cyber-attacks, which can potentially cost them billions and billions of dollars and completely reshape their future prospects. Artificially intelligent solutions can winnow a large amount of data at once, detect any breach or abnormal activity, and take necessary preventive action all at once. Hence, adopting a better cyber security posture powered by AI will benefit all businesses.
Customer Relationship Management
The first point of contact between a business and a potential customer is typically one of confusion and lack of knowledge at the customer’s end. With artificial intelligence coming in, business transformation has started happening from this first point of contact itself. Digital assistants or chat bots come with this solution, providing a benefit to businesses in the entire spectrum of their sales life cycle and CRM. By presenting the customer with initial support about its products, retaining valuable customer data to be used by the business in the future, and providing demographic data on all the potential customers. As artificial intelligence matures in the future, the possibility of bettering its customer relationship management is exponential, thereby completely transforming the business.
Digital personal assistants
How valuable have assistants been, and who does not want to have an assistant take care of their calendar, reply to emails, remind them of important dates, and so on? Traditionally, only the top bosses have had the privilege of having an assistant. Artificial intelligence is set to change that by providing digital assistants to anyone who needs them. We are already witnessing tremendous changes in Siri, Google Assistant, Alexa, and so on. From taking screenshots to managing our calendars, digital assistants are here to improve human efficiency and productivity.
Environmental sustainability
Artificial intelligence brings with it three unique qualities that can help the earth achieve environmental sustainability. First is its ability to perform repetitive tasks in a much faster manner compared to the same work done by its human counterpart. The other ability is to integrate multiple computers and machines to solve a complex problem. One more underlying quality of integration is updating it with a click. This entire integration of computers can be upgraded with one click of a button. The third unique ability is to make sense of the sea of unstructured data that is available, which is humanly impossible to do. Information asymmetry is one of the key challenges to environmental sustainability, which AI takes care of. The transformation will cover the length and breadth of sectors like biodiversity, energy, transportation, and water.
Artificial intelligence : ushering a business transformation
Anyone in the vertical transportation industry, be it an end user, a buyer, a consultant, or a supplier or manufacturer, knows well that the lead time from lead generation to finally handing over an elevator is a time-consuming and sometimes arduous process. The result is a highly dissatisfied customer and a battered brand image for the supplier. This typically happens due to a lot of entangled stakeholders with different results in mind and depending on the passing, sharing, and understanding of information related to the entire execution process. Needless to say, a lot of time is spent on repetitive tasks, which adds to the complexity. With AI coming in, this value chain would cool off a lot, and the end result would be achieved at a much faster pace, increasing customer satisfaction significantly.
Sales is the backbone of any industry, employing platoons of salesforce going out in the market, generating leads, and meeting prospective clients to win the order. With digital assistants, lead generation can be very well eliminated, saving thousands of man hours. It would go to a different level by providing basic and standard information to the prospect client there, again saving up significant efforts required traditionally. The salesperson would then be in a better position to invest his time in quality discussions with clients where more cognitive abilities are required to win a deal.
Impact of AI on businesses
AI will have an impact on the entire length and breadth of businesses, leaving no sector untouched. Restricting human interventions in areas, especially those that are prone to human cognitive biases and emotions, will usher disruption in not only faster and more efficient delivery but a significant reduction in fraud and misgovernance. Take an example of the banking sector: the issuance of mortgages as humans at every checkpoint, which has led to many fraudulent incidents and huge NPA’s to the financial books of the institutions. With increased artificial intelligence incorporated in these critical business processes, not only the dispersal of mortgages can be achieved at lightning speed but with far more accuracy and a cleaner outcome. With the colossal ability of vast and insightful data analytics, artificial intelligence will open the doors to far more tailor made offerings than anyone could have imagined in the past.
With the rapid increase in digitalization and accessibility to superfast internet, the threat of cybercrime is no longer something in the distant future. Cybercrimes and cyber frauds are increasing day by day.
Every rose has its thorn; AI is no exception
While AI, without a shadow of a doubt, will revolutionise and transform the world of business, it comes with its own shortfalls and pitfalls. The first shortfall is the dependency on a huge amount of data. For artificial intelligence to achieve its true potential, it needs a huge amount of data to derive a high level of accuracy. For example, if one wants an AI arsenal to help in waste management for a city, it needs a huge amount of historical and present data to understand the patterns of waste generated again based on different times of the year and to analyse the areas where improvements can be made. The second shortfall is the quality of the data available. AI would function following the simple rule of garbage in, garbage out. Controlling and ensuring that garbage is not fed in the form of data is an uphill task. The third, which can be considered a pitfall, is the bias in the data fed. Just imagine if a person is a pure vegetarian, but if he provides data inputs as being a non-vegetarian, what will be the impact on the analytics done by artificial intelligence working on a waste management project for a city? And further imagine the distortion done to the data if, unfortunately, there are many individuals doing the same. Finally, humans need to be responsible when handling the tremendous power at hand. Needless to say, this aspect is the most worrying, as we humans have a tremendous track record of mishandling great inventions and pushing the world and its residents towards catastrophe time and again.
Imagine a dine-out in 2034, all powered by AI
Imagine an AI-powered dine-out in 2034. It might have the following features:
- Smart Reservation: Book your table online and receive a code that guides your car directly to a parking spot.
- Personalized Welcome: A digital voice greets you, and a holographic host escorts you to your table.
- Augmented Reality Menu: Interact with the menu, see dishes come to life, and read customer reviews.
- AI-powered Music: The music adapts to your preferences and those of other diners.
- Real-time Kitchen View: Watch your meal being prepared and discover other menu options.
- Touchless Payment: Settle your bill seamlessly without hassle.
- Captured Memories: Receive happy moments captured during your meal via WhatsApp.
- Personalised Farewell: A holographic host chats with you and sends you off with a warm goodbye.
- Smart Car Integration: Your fully charged car awaits, ready to take you home.
Conclusion
We are well past the finish line of speculating whether artificial intelligence will be imbibed by modern-day businesses, as it is already happening. One cannot possibly identify any segment of business that is directly or indirectly not utilising or incorporating artificial intelligence in its business ecosystem. The absorption of artificial intelligence will only be seen rapidly increasing from here on. Business transformation shall be witnessed at a breathtaking speed beyond our imagination and calculations. It cannot be challenged at all that not only businesses will reap the benefits of the positive impact, but the end customer will also benefit hugely. Lightning-fast deliveries, easier access to product information in real time, a seamless service experience, and a considerable decrease in product failure. However, the question remains primarily whether artificial intelligence can be put to use within ethical boundaries. With such a huge amount of data in hand and business houses having to report to their boardrooms quarterly of the profits they shall bring in, ethics is and has been compromised. Unfortunately, with artificial intelligence, the outcomes can be devastating, as they put the personal information of a large number of human populations across various demographics in the hands of a select few. While it has immense potential to safeguard against cybercrimes, when wrongly used, it will prove to be a cybercriminal, which is beyond what we have ever comprehended.
Thus, it would largely lie in the hands of governing bodies to have regulatory policies in place to monitor, restrict, and punish artificially intelligent crimes. Unfortunately, negligible steps have been taken on this front, and not to forget, it is humans who are seated on governing body-high chairs with their own priorities and desire to retain their powers. The human race has exemplified throughout its existence to take stringent steps not as a prevention to a calamity but always as a cure.
All inventions have two sides of a coin; one is good and the other is bad. Artificial intelligence is no exception. In the end, it all ends with us and how we put it to use. Do we use it for sustainable development and the betterment of the human race, or mere profits? Do we use it to heal our environment, which has already lost so much or reaped benefits from short-term goals? Do we use new innovations keeping in mind job creations for us, or do we just replace the human workforce with artificial intelligence to improve our balance sheet? Only time will give us the answers.
References
- https://stefanini.com/en/insights/articles/artificial-intelligence-in-transportation-moving-faster
- https://www.microsourcing.com/learn/blog/the-impact-of-ai-on-business/
- https://ec.europa.eu/futurium/en/system/files/ged/vincent-pedemonte_ai-for-sustainability_0.pdf
