Artificial Intelligence: Investment In Innovation Is A Key To Success

Innovation Artificial Intelligence: Investment In Innovation Is A Key To Success Alejandro Oses Forbes Councils Member Forbes Technology Council COUNCIL POST Expertise from Forbes Councils members, operated under license. Opinions expressed are those of the author. | Membership (fee-based) Jul 7, 2022, 10:15am EDT | Share to Facebook Share to Twitter Share to Linkedin CEO and co-founder at Rootstack .

I lead digital accelerations for companies across all industries. getty The Encyclopedia Britannica defines artificial intelligence (AI) as “the ability of a digital computer or computer-controlled robot to perform tasks commonly associated with intelligent beings. ” In simple terms, AI allows computers to perform tasks generally done by humans.

While much is said about what AI is, less is said about what exactly it can achieve for your company. In addition to automating workflows and tasks, AI is fulfilling functions of great importance in the daily processes of some of the best-valued companies worldwide. In fact, according to McKinsey, it is used by 56% of companies worldwide , a number that should keep growing.

Most people are familiar with some types of AI. Many people, for instance, interact with virtual assistants, such as Amazon’s Alexa. Amazon developed this technology with core speech recognition and machine learning features to offer users effective interaction, as they might with a human assistant.

The use of AI for voice recognition has not only managed to shake the foundations of business but has also turned our daily lives upside down, delivering new connections between man and machine. Google has also ventured into AI. In addition to acquiring several startups working on AI technologies , Google is the creator of the TensorFlow project , an open-source library for machine learning and artificial intelligence.

MORE FOR YOU Google Issues Warning For 2 Billion Chrome Users Forget The MacBook Pro, Apple Has Bigger Plans Google Discounts Pixel 6, Nest & Pixel Buds In Limited-Time Sale Event What will AI adoption look like in 2022? AI has become an ace up the sleeve for companies, allowing them to modernize their software and technological systems, in addition to achieving economic and labor productivity benefits. According to Statista, investment in AI technology will reach almost a trillion dollars by 2024. Likewise, a survey conducted by IBM of 5,500 companies around the world in 2021 to study the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the adoption of AI technology showed that 43% of the companies surveyed accelerated the rollout of their AI technology to automate their tasks during the pandemic.

This adoption of AI has paid off, as McKinsey found that companies reporting at least 5% of earnings (EBIT) that are attributable to AI have increased to 27% from 22% the previous year. In short, as these surveys demonstrate, adopting AI—especially for the automation of tasks—can allow a company to put repetitive processes and flows in the hands of robots and bots, which leaves human staff with more freedom to serve customers, which, in turn, helps generate larger profits. How can artificial intelligence be applied successfully? When companies want to understand how to successfully adopt AI, they should look at the numerous success stories and see how artificial intelligence has allowed prestigious companies to solve problems that threatened their position in the industry.

For example, Facebook, the most popular social network in the world, faced a problem: Its users published content that insulted or humiliated other people or groups. The human staff became overwhelmed with this problem and found that they were unable to attend to all the complaints. To solve these challenges the company created DeepText and DeepFace .

DeepText is an engine that automatically analyzes the texts and the intention behind them, identifying those messages that attacked a race, sexuality or group of people. DeepFace can recognize users’ faces and identify if an image was uploaded by the user or some other account, deleting those images that were uploaded by another account. With these two AI technologies, Facebook was able to more successfully navigate these issues, using AI to its advantage and setting an example for other companies.

Conclusion AI is making its way and is increasingly accepted by companies of all sizes. Entrusting repetitive tasks and other business processes to AI is, in my opinion, the best decision you can make as the technology leader of an organization. Freeing your staff from these endless cycles and allowing them to focus on other goals that need a human touch can bring immense economic and productivity benefits.

Forbes Technology Council is an invitation-only community for world-class CIOs, CTOs and technology executives. Do I qualify? Follow me on Twitter or LinkedIn . Check out my website .

Alejandro Oses Editorial Standards Print Reprints & Permissions.