Artificial Intelligence way to go for businesses? 90% executives believe so

It seems artificial intelligence (AI) is the way to go for businesses and corporate. Going by a recent study, as many as 90 per cent of executives feel AI will have a positive impact on their company's growth. 86 per cent of them believe it will help improve productivity, and 69 per cent sees in it the potential for job creation in their respective countries and industries.The study, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by Microsoft, surveyed more than 400 senior executives from various industries, including financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and the public sector. 

The findings are a part of the study entitled, "Intelligent Economies: AI's Transformation of Industries and Society,  that explores the transformative potential of artificial intelligence (AI) on markets and societies across the developed and developing worlds. The study, conducted by The Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and sponsored by Microsoft, surveyed more than 400 senior executives from various industries, including financial services, healthcare and life sciences, manufacturing, retail and the public sector. The survey was conducted in eight markets: France, Germany, Mexico, Poland, South Africa, Thailand, the UK and the US.

Despite often-expressed concerns about job displacement, respondents were broadly optimistic that AI will create new roles. Overall, nearly six out of ten (59 per cent) believe that AI will increase wages and 56 per cent actually see a boost to the employment rate in their country or industry.

Nine out of ten executives from around the world describe AI as important to solving their organisations' strategic challenges.

More than one in four (27 per cent) say their organisations have already incorporated AI into key processes and services, while another 46 per cent have one or more AI pilot projects under way.

As AI becomes increasingly embedded in the society, it will not only change the way businesses work but will also have some significant economic, social and civic effects on citizens and consumers. National and regional economies will become more effective in the way they produce and distribute goods and services. But such transformations will also introduce new challenges such as ethical or security concerns as well as cost and execution risk.

Overall, AI is on the course to transform the global economy with organisations around the world having high hopes on its potential. As per the report, in 2017 the global economy recorded its best performance in six years and looks set for a sustained growth in 2018.

The Economist Intelligence Unit expects 2018 to record global growth of 3.8 per cent, surpassing 2017's growth rate of 3.7 per cent and well above 2016's 3.2 per cent.

Source : https://www.businesstoday.in/current/economy-politics/artificial-intelligence-way-to-go-for-businesses-90pc-executives-believe-so/story/281295.html

CHATBOTS

What Are Chatbots?

Chatbots – also known as “conversational agents” – are software applications that mimic written or spoken human speech for the purposes of simulating a conversation or interaction with a real person. There are two primary ways chatbots are offered to visitors: via web-based applications or standalone apps. Today, chatbots are used most commonly in the customer service space, assuming roles traditionally performed by living, breathing human beings such as Tier-1 support operatives and customer satisfaction reps.

 Conversational agents are becoming much more common partly due to the fact that barriers to entry in creating chatbots (i.e. sophisticated programming knowledge and other highly specialized technical skills) are becoming increasingly unnecessary. 

Today, you can make your very own chatbot that you can use in Facebook Messenger, for example – all without a pricey Computer Science degree or even much prior coding experience – and there are several sites that offer the ability to create rudimentary chatbots using simple drag-and-drop interfaces.

How Do Chatbots Work?

At the heart of chatbot technology lies natural language processing or NLP, the same technology that forms the basis of the voice recognition systems used by virtual assistants such as Google Now, Apple’s Siri, and Microsoft’s Cortana.

Chatbots process the text presented to them by the user (a process known as “parsing”), before responding according to a complex series of algorithms that interprets and identifies what the user said, infers what they mean and/or want, and determine a series of appropriate responses based on this information.Some chatbots offer a remarkably authentic conversational experience, in which it’s very difficult to determine whether the agent is a bot or a human being. Others are much easier to spot (much like the T-600 series of murderous robots in the popular Terminator sci-fi action movies):

Although chatbot technology is distinctly different from natural language processing technology, the former can only really advance as quickly as the latter; without continued developments in NLP, chatbots remain at the mercy of algorithms’ current ability to detect the subtle nuances in both written and spoken dialogue.

This is where most applications of NLP struggle, and not just chatbots. Any system or application that relies upon a machine’s ability to parse human speech is likely to struggle with the complexities inherent in elements of speech such as metaphors and similes. Despite these considerable limitations, chatbots are becoming increasingly sophisticated, responsive, and more “natural.”

Put another way, they’re becoming more human.

Source: https://www.wordstream.com/blog/ws/2017/10/04/chatbots