What are the applications of AI?
Artificial intelligence has made its way into a wide variety of markets. Here are 11
examples.
AI in healthcare. The biggest bets are on improving patient outcomes and reducing
costs. Companies are applying machine learning to make better and faster medical
diagnoses than humans. One of the best-known healthcare technologies is IBM
Watson. It understands natural language and can respond to questions asked of it. The
system mines patient data and other available data sources to form a hypothesis,
which it then presents with a confidence scoring schema. Other AI applications
include using online virtual health assistants and chatbots to help patients and
healthcare customers find medical information, schedule appointments, understand the
billing process and complete other administrative processes. An array of AI
technologies is also being used to predict, fight and understand pandemics such as
COVID-19.
AI in business. Machine learning algorithms are being integrated into analytics and
customer relationship management (CRM) platforms to uncover information on how
to better serve customers. Chatbots have been incorporated into websites to provide
immediate service to customers. The rapid advancement of generative AI technology
such as ChatGPT is expected to have far-reaching consequences: eliminating jobs,
revolutionizing product design and disrupting business models.
AI in education. AI can automate grading, giving educators more time for other
tasks. It can assess students and adapt to their needs, helping them work at their own
pace. AI tutors can provide additional support to students, ensuring they stay on track.
The technology could also change where and how students learn, perhaps even
replacing some teachers. As demonstrated by ChatGPT, Google Bard and other large
language models, generative AI can help educators craft course work and other
teaching materials and engage students in new ways. The advent of these tools also
forces educators to rethink student homework and testing and revise policies on
plagiarism.
AI in finance. AI in personal finance applications, such as Intuit Mint or TurboTax, is
disrupting financial institutions. Applications such as these collect personal data and
provide financial advice. Other programs, such as IBM Watson, have been applied to
the process of buying a home. Today, artificial intelligence software performs much
of the trading on Wall Street.
AI in law. The discovery process -- sifting through documents -- in law is often
overwhelming for humans. Using AI to help automate the legal industry's labor-
intensive processes is saving time and improving client service. Law firms use
machine learning to describe data and predict outcomes, computer vision to classify
and extract information from documents, and NLP to interpret requests for
information.
AI in entertainment and media. The entertainment business uses AI techniques for
targeted advertising, recommending content, distribution, detecting fraud, creating
scripts and making movies. Automated journalism helps newsrooms streamline media
workflows reducing time, costs and complexity. Newsrooms use AI to automate
routine tasks, such as data entry and proofreading; and to research topics and assist
with headlines. How journalism can reliably use ChatGPT and other generative AI to
generate content is open to question.
AI in software coding and IT processes. New generative AI tools can be used to
produce application code based on natural language prompts, but it is early days for
these tools and unlikely they will replace software engineers soon. AI is also being
used to automate many IT processes, including data entry, fraud detection, customer
service, and predictive maintenance and security.
Security. AI and machine learning are at the top of the buzzword list security vendors
use to market their products, so buyers should approach with caution. Still, AI
techniques are being successfully applied to multiple aspects of cybersecurity,
including anomaly detection, solving the false-positive problem and conducting
behavioral threat analytics. Organizations use machine learning in security
information and event management (SIEM) software and related areas to detect
anomalies and identify suspicious activities that indicate threats. By analyzing data
and using logic to identify similarities to known malicious code, AI can provide alerts
to new and emerging attacks much sooner than human employees and previous
technology iterations.
AI in manufacturing. Manufacturing has been at the forefront of incorporating
robots into the workflow. For example, the industrial robots that were at one time
programmed to perform single tasks and separated from human workers, increasingly
function as cobots: Smaller, multitasking robots that collaborate with humans and take
on responsibility for more parts of the job in warehouses, factory floors and other
workspaces.
AI in banking. Banks are successfully employing chatbots to make their customers
aware of services and offerings and to handle transactions that don't require human
intervention. AI virtual assistants are used to improve and cut the costs of compliance
with banking regulations. Banking organizations use AI to improve their decision-
making for loans, set credit limits and identify investment opportunities.
AI in transportation. In addition to AI's fundamental role in operating autonomous
vehicles, AI technologies are used in transportation to manage traffic, predict flight
delays, and make ocean shipping safer and more efficient. In supply chains, AI is
replacing traditional methods of forecasting demand and predicting disruptions, a
trend accelerated by COVID-19 when many companies were caught off guard by the
effects of a global pandemic on the supply and demand of goods.
Augmented intelligence vs. artificial intelligence
Some industry experts have argued that the term artificial intelligence is too closely
linked to popular culture, which has caused the general public to have improbable
expectations about how AI will change the workplace and life in general. They have
suggested using the term augmented intelligence to differentiate between AI systems
that act autonomously -- popular culture examples include Hal 9000 and The
Terminator -- and AI tools that support humans.
Augmented intelligence. Some researchers and marketers hope the
label augmented intelligence, which has a more neutral connotation, will
help people understand that most implementations of AI will be weak and
simply improve products and services. Examples include automatically
surfacing important information in business intelligence reports or
highlighting important information in legal filings. The rapid adoption of
ChatGPT and Bard across industry indicates a willingness to use AI to
support human decision-making.
Artificial intelligence. True AI, or AGI, is closely associated with the
concept of the technological singularity -- a future ruled by an artificial
superintelligence that far surpasses the human brain's ability to understand it
or how it is shaping our reality. This remains within the realm of science
fiction, though some developers are working on the problem. Many believe
that technologies such as quantum computing could play an important role
in making AGI a reality and that we should reserve the use of the term AI
for this kind of general intelligence.