By Daniella James
Not long ago a lot of people associated artificial intelligence (AI) with robots that would eventually become sentient, filled with aspirations to rule over the world.
Although this dystopian characterization is steadily waning, AI still continues to take over the world (but in a completely different way) as it becomes increasingly involved in multiple industries.
Founder and CEO of Spark Cognition Amir Hussain described the growing popularity of AI as the second coming of software that offers valuable traits and features to consumers, making it instrumental for different kinds of businesses.
These features have led to a number of significant benefits such as cybersecurity enhancement, automation, cost reduction and customer service improvement.
Forbes emphasized that these advantages have rendered AI as a strategic priority for 83 percent of business leaders coming from 112 countries and 21 industries. A similar survey cited on Globe Newswire found that 65 percent of business professionals share the same sentiment and consider AI and machine learning as the most notable data initiative by their respective companies.
With how entrenched AI is in every level of business activity, it has dramatically changed how Americans do business in a lot of different ways. In this article, we will delve into the various ways AI has changed the way people do business — specifically in the fields of finance and marketing.
Finance Industry
Industries all over the world, including banking, are continuously shifting into the digital space. While this translates to greater efficiency and easier processing, it can also pose certain cybersecurity threats.
To address this, banks are leveraging AI to detect and prevent payment fraud and improve processes for anti-money laundering (AML), customer identification and authentication. AI is also transforming loan management practices by making the process of approval more efficient.
Instead of an employee manually reviewing all the forms and documents, machines can analyze the data collected and identify any exceptions that need to be personally addressed.
A post on personal loans by Marcus explains that online applications allow these types of loans to be approved within 24 hours, with potential consumers aware of their options within five minutes. These benefits mean thousands can choose to send in online applications per day, with AI also enabling financial institutions to determine creditworthiness based on alternative data in order to identify potential customers — even among those that have low credit scores.
Manufacturing Industry
While a lot of individuals have already moved on from the idea that robots will invade the world, some still fear that the integration of AI into different businesses will eventually lead to millions of people losing their jobs and being replaced by AI-powered machines.
Although this may be the case for some industries, in the field of manufacturing AI is doing the opposite. It is being considered as a viable lifeline that will help address the pressing problem of labor shortage.
As explained in our previous post “Artificial Intelligence and Automation — the U.S. Manufacturing Challenge,” in order to address the projected 2.4 million job vacancies the country will see by 2028, the manufacturing sector is turning to AI to fill in the ‘production-focused’ positions that are low-skilled.
Aside from addressing the problem of labor shortage, AI can also improve overall safety by cutting down the incidence of industrial accidents and introducing more effective safety measures. Integrating AI into the field of manufacturing can also result in lower operational costs due to its ability to predict machine problems early on and with greater efficiency.
All of these are possible thanks to its capacity to anticipate information, refine processes and track incongruities.
There is no question that AI is the future and will change most aspects of how we do business. The good news is that this will be a positive change that will streamline business operations and make business much easier to