How are companies using Artificial Intelligence?
Seldom a week passes by that you won’t find an article, Ted Talk, podcast or webinar touting the advantages and changes that Artificial Intelligence, or AI for short, will bring to organizations. No industry, department or role will escape its influence. And we’re not just speaking about the future either. AI is already here. So how are companies using Artificial Intelligence?
Artificial intelligence is being used in unique and innovative ways, from real estate to eLearning and from food tech to retail. We’ve already written about the advantages that AI can bring to the table, and below we’ll share some examples of how various industries have implemented this technology. Or how it could be implemented in the future.
Real estate
Office buildings will remain an essential staple in our professional lives, even with the setback caused by the coronavirus. Using them efficiently, however, is another issue. But there are now solutions that can help businesses manage their property better. You can use them to have a better overview of how office space is used, how meeting rooms are used and booked, analyze energy consumption, streamline your maintenance activities, and more.
Besides, AI can also improve worker well-being and flexibility within the whole company. The Edge building in Amsterdam is one such example. It assigns desks based on peoples’ schedules, directs them to their parking spaces, knows how they like their coffee and temperature settings. It can even shut down parts of the building when use is low, leading to reductions in heating, cooling, lighting, and cleaning costs.
eLearning
Training and development can benefit from the use of AI. There is a need for a push into helping people learn new skills or reskill so that they can take advantage of new technologies and maintain their competitiveness on the job market. This requires assessment, grading, guidance, and mentoring, which need to be done on a massive scale and increasingly online. This is not something that can be done entirely by humans, so we need AI to make sure that the learning process is as smooth and efficient as possible.
Duolingo, for example, uses AI to test new learners, help you remember new words and practice conversations via chatbots. And this is only the beginning. In the future, training solutions will be automatically able to tailor themselves to your learning style and speed. A lot of people give up learning new skills or improving them because current solutions aren’t all that customizable. Some people are visual learners, others are auditory, and some learn best in a kinesthetic way. This is very hard to adapt to when you’re delivering a class training with printed materials. AI will change that.
Food tech
Another industry where the use of Artificial Intelligence can improve things is the food industry. Whether it’s basic processes such as sorting different types of products based on variables like size, freshness, or color to more advanced ones like managing the supply chain – food safety monitoring, product tracking, better forecasting, and more. This is likely to become a key feature as consumers start to pay more attention to the food they buy and want to know how it was grown or whether the farmer was paid a fair price.
In the future, we will also see a more significant role for AI in farming. The current way we are growing our food is having a substantial impact on the environment. And what we need to do is to maximize and increase the quality of what we are already growing. Artificial Intelligence could be used to monitor the effects of variables such as UV light, pests, salinity, heat, nutrients, and water, allowing farmers to identify potential challenges long before they become a significant problem and increase productivity without harming the environment.
Retail
Whether it’s Walmart, Lowe, Macy’s, or Amazon, the retail industry is embracing AI. We’ve all read about, heard of, or visited (if you’re lucky enough) the Amazon Go Store where customers can walk in, take what they want, and walk out without going through a cashier. But this is just the tip of the Artificial Intelligence iceberg.
Just like in food tech, retailers also have a vast supply chain to manage. A lot of data can be analyzed and used to increase efficiency, reduce costs, and predict trends. AI solutions can crunch the data and identify patterns based on location, weather, foot traffic, and more to assist retailers in better managing and restocking their inventory. On the customer side, this will also mean a lower probability of not finding a piece of clothing in the right size.
Conclusions
To sum up, AI will start to play an ever-increasing role, especially when it comes to combing through medium to large volumes of data and identifying insights that can help businesses become more efficient. But you don’t need to be global or have thousands of employees to benefit from Artificial Intelligence.
We’ve helped many small and medium enterprises and start-ups develop or improve their own custom AI software. All you need to start this journey is a trusted partner. Get in touch with us and let’s talk AI.