8 AI Trends You Need to Know About

Years ago, artificial intelligence (AI) was a highly sought-after capability that only tech companies in San Francisco were able to leverage. Now, those same organizations have created machine learning and AI toolkits that any business can use to optimize their performance, revenues, and efficiency.

Investment in AI through these toolkits unlocks more long-term and short-term value than a business could find through manual data analysis. Perhaps best of all, AI offers predictions, recommendations, real-time alerts, and so much more. Here are eight ways AI is transforming businesses and interactions in 2020 and beyond.

1. Personalization in Real-Time

AI knows your customers and it monitors their actions in real-time. This allows the technology to incorporate personalization according to each client’s needs and desires. Because it also knows purchase behavior for all segments of your customer base, it can recommend services and products that the AI knows the customer will find attractive.

These engaging interactions occur in real-time because there is only a small window of time to act when they’ve captured the user’s attention. The number of personalization options for businesses and their customers are continuously increasing, and the quality of recommendations is always improving.

2. AI Interactions

Chances are that you’ve interacted with AI applications in the past; most likely, you’ve talked with a chatbot that guided you to the correct person to speak with. You may have also interacted with a virtual assistant. But these tools are still improving.

Over the next decade, we’ll likely see a drop in customer service agents in favor of an AI handling the most common and frequently asked queries. The technology would be trained to interact with you in a human-like way but respond faster than a human agent would.

3. Monitoring Business Data

Automating business processes and operations can cut major costs for companies. Right now, manufacturing and other industrial companies have seen success in automating their machines and factory floors. But many businesses have manual and mechanical processes that are repetitive, require a human’s attention, and are costly. For example, filling out forms, documentation, and managing paperwork is highly manual and mechanical for humans. Thankfully, AI can automate these simple tasks with more accuracy and speed, freeing up the employee to focus on more important tasks.

4. The Data Synthesis Method

This method is great for businesses that are young or those that lost a large amount of data. Because AI and machine learning applications depend on massive amounts of data to develop deep learning algorithms and trained models, it’s imperative that a business wishing to utilize AI has a large amount of data to train the algorithms on. However, it’s not always as cut-and-dry as that because businesses often face corrupt data files, difficulty in incorporating a new system, and getting enough data on time.

With the data synthesis method, AI can use available data to create new data points. In other words, AI doesn’t need as much data anymore, and the technology has evolved to a point where it can generate substantial learnings from a very small amount of data.

5. Strengthened Cybersecurity

Cybersecurity is an incredibly manual process, with engineers and IT departments manually issuing security updates and patches on a schedule. But with AI, cybersecurity and phishing threats can be identified in real-time, updates can be issued earlier than midnight (when the AI detects a low amount of users on the network), and transactions can be scanned in real-time for fraud and suspicious activity.

AI can boost any business’s cybersecurity game and help prevent all kinds of cybercrime while remaining vigilant and critical of new activity. As data becomes a commodity, cybersecurity will become a mandatory priority for businesses and governments.

6. AI-enabled Devices

In the next few years, we expect to see substantial growth in AI-powered devices. Experts predict that the overall spend on the implementation of AI-enabled devices will decrease, while devices that offer AI-powered automation will proliferate. These devices will offer businesses increased opportunities that will further cut operating and customer retention costs.

Automation directed and created by users will offer personalized experiences and free up time and energy for users. Some examples include household tools for productivity and management tools. As for now, businesses have been investing in AI-enabled phones, watches, and other devices to improve productivity in real-time and increase the accuracy of data used in key decision making.

The Rise of Facial Recognition

Facial recognition is very controversial, but there is no question that it can offer personalization and better security. Many countries are poised to incorporate facial recognition technology, as well as other biometrics, into their security implementations for an enhanced multi-factor experience. AI can even help us reduce contact form spam by recognizing if a robot or human is filling out a form. Using deep learning, AI developers are ensuring facial recognition not only identifies people but also animals and inanimate objects.

7. A Better Healthcare Experience

AI is improving how well healthcare data predicts medical conditions in patients. With more data than ever being generated, AI ensures data is accurate and useable in real-time diagnosing scenarios. AI can already read radiological scans from MRI, CT, and X-rays for cancer, bone breaks, and other abnormalities before they are obvious to the human eye. Not only that, but AI can quickly compare treatment plans and patient outcomes across multiple hospitals and countries to create a personalized recommended treatment plan for each patient. Machine learning is also being applied to healthcare data to generate improved diagnoses and better medical imaging technology.

8. AI is the Future of Business

AI will become so closely intertwined with the customer experience that businesses cannot afford to skip out on implementing this technology in their processes and operations. The technology has the potential to improve the use of data towards better decision-making and actionable insights, how information is interpreted, and even how real conversations take place.

You might be thinking that we’re still decades away from these eventualities, but the future is closer than it feels. AI will open doors for businesses in virtually every single vertical and industry, paving the road for a new kind of efficiency and productivity.

What AI trends have you recently noticed that aren’t included on this list? As always, let us know your thoughts in the comments below!