Artificial intelligence has been a debatable trending topic in 2016. While some praised the technology as useful from military campaign strategy to predictive analysis, others believed on its reliance as a fraught with danger. Its effect however cannot be ignored and 2017 will see the AI reshaping our daily lives in unprecedented ways-from businesses to government landscape.
Indian author, Shashi Shekhar Vempati of Carnegie Endowment for International Peace has recommended spurring AI-based innovation and establishing AI-ready infrastructure to prepare India’s jobs and skills markets for an AI-based future and to secure its strategic interests.
Solutions powered by AI/cognitive technology will displace jobs with the biggest impact felt in transportation, logistics, customer service and consumer services.
In businesses, AI can prove very useful in overcoming fragmentation caused by scaling. Technology like ScenGen takes working parts that seem disparate and combines them into a functioning whole by predicting and testing how each piece operates and organizing them more effectively. Incorporating AI to consolidate employees, tasks, and systems will reap immediate benefits.
One feature of AI is its ability to think more quickly through a problem than a human mind could. When such applications work in your business, there are far less chances of pratfalls and owners can focus on more important issues.
AI can facilitate strategising through projection. Its ability to create strategies for every possible future scenario will give businesses wings.
The next big opportunity, in terms of both impact and technology, is cyber security.
Cyber attacks are among the biggest threats to businesses, governments, and institutions today. The Identity Theft Resource Center notes that nearly 178 million personal records were exposed in data breaches in 2015; high-profile breaches announced in 2016 include the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Research VP at Gartner, Earl Perkins made a shocking revelation about security, saying that 99% of exploited securities are already known.
Unfortunately, a determined hacker cannot be stopped from firewalls. For now, it’s just humans who try to anticipate what the other human might do before they do it. But AI can be a valuable ally for defense against hackers. Amit Kulkarni, president and CEO of cognitive surveillance company Cognetyx said that AI can be trained to constantly learn patterns in order to identify any deviation in it, much like a human does.
Machine learning, a component of AI, applies existing data to constantly improve its functions and strategies over time. It learns and understands normal user behavior and can identify even the slightest variation from that pattern. AI can also use this data to improve its own functions and strategies.
Private sector businesses and corporations have already deployed AI systems, and as the White House notes, even some governments are using the technology because AI can save time and money by going through structured data quickly, as well as comprehensively reading and learning unstructured data, statistics, words, and phrases. Essentially, AI could save tax dollars as well as national secrets.
Indeed, AI is the future and remaining current and abreast of every new advance therein is absolutely vital to maintaining relevance in the exponentially digitizing future.
