Bench Talk

Artificial Intelligence (AI) will continue to be increasingly integrated into businesses to transform them into new marketing solutions and increased efficiencies. IBM’s Watson, the company’s famous supercomputer, is expected to touch and make an impact in over one billion (1B) people’s lives. Within 10 to 15 years, AI is expected to generate an economically beneficial impact on the world economy exceeding 15 percent of the world’s current economic output. China, North America, and Northern Europe are expected to be the primary geographical regions receiving economic benefits. It is estimated that they may receive up to 80 percent of the beneficial economic impacts.

New marketing solutions are expected to provide the highest level of economic benefits, perhaps 60 percent of the total, through increased consumer demand. Greater efficiencies spurred on by labor productivity improvements enabled by AI taking over roles currently held by humans will provide the bulk of the remaining economic benefits.

Accenture, a global management consulting and professional services company, identifies the following industries as benefiting with the largest economic growth:

• Manufacturing
• Professional Service
• Wholesale & Retail
• Public Services
• Information & Communication

Businesses are quickly working to ensure they are taking full advantage of what AI has to offer. Let’s take a look at some of the areas they are working on to make their business more competitive and responsive to their customers.

Chat-bots are artificially intelligent computer programs that dialog with humans—typically customers calling in with questions or in need of help with ordering—by providing responses that are similar in feel and behavior to chatting with a person. In the same way that the touch-tone telephone provided the ability to bypass the human switchboard operator, the chat-bot provides businesses with the opportunity to automate many of their customer service functions. Similarly, virtual agents can go one step further: Customers will be able to engage with an interface that takes away the need to engage with a human.

AI enables less effort, time, and money to be expended to handle human relationships and customer service. In the course of writing this article, my phone popped up with a message about an upcoming flight to New York City. With the push of a button, I am now checked in. This technology has existed on our phones for the past few years, but businesses will be significantly expanding the capabilities that customers have to quickly and efficiently engage with their company.

Advertisers are also using AI to improve their decision making. AI can assist with generating a greater variety of adverting options, as well as assist key decision makers by providing insights about customer preferences based on customer inputs and feedback. This ability to efficiently handle Big Data quickly and efficiently is not just of benefit for advertisers; many businesses are looking at how to take vast amounts of information they have available and use it to improve decision making and marketing.

AI technology provides benefits because, like humans, it can be highly adaptable according to the situation. Whether it is interacting with humans in a customer support fashion, where the specific dialog cannot be well known in advance, or in sifting through medical imaging files to detect illnesses and suggest a course of treatment, AI can be enabled to provide feedback that is appropriate to the context of the circumstance.