best future uses for artificial intelligence

 In which areas of business can we expect AI to transform over the next decade? Almost all, experts say. Here are half a dozen to start the revolution

Artificial intelligence (AI) has secured its status as a must-have technology, enabling companies to move faster and further than competitors to refine forecasts, increase efficiency and optimize real-time pricing or inventory control.

But as we wrote in the November issue of Technology Magazine, most boardrooms and bosses don't yet fully understand the potential use cases for AI and machine learning (ML). "Stakeholders often don't know what to ask for to get the right benefits from technology," says Elliott Young, CTO, Dell Technologies UK. "That means they really don't know what their business could be losing."

Overhyped artificial intelligence scares people and masks the real benefits these technologies can offer, says Anthony J. Bradley, vice president of Gartner's emerging technologies and trends research group. "This can lead to slower adoption and even sociopolitical fear and government regulation that will stifle progress."

We take a closer look at six sectors that will attract a lot of attention in the future.

Predictions and forecasting

Artificial intelligence is moving from being a technology that identifies relationships in data and more accurately predicts current trends to one that detects future shifts in everything from leisure and travel patterns to corporate creditworthiness by analyzing preferences and sentiment, says Sian Townson, partner. , Oliver Wyman.

"As the explainability of AI models improves, along with more reliable ways of monitoring performance, robustness and fairness, these more complex models have in turn become more reliable with their methods and results more understandable, and thus more feasible and creative applications," he explains. "AI can recognize disruptors by making connections between built-in characteristics."

Risk and insurance

Increasing efficiency and fairness in areas such as credit risk, insurance, human resources and supervisory performance, machine learning (ML) will read forms and review voice and video recordings, highlighting where the reviewer's attention should be focused and how the call should proceed . routed, or simply if the attachment was forgotten, details Oliver Wyman's Townson.

“AI is currently being used to automate customer-facing steps, from chatbots to order processing; some companies will also use it to improve their customer service, actually making processes more transparent and objective.”

Advances in quantifying fairness and mitigating bias allow AI-based approaches to be fairer, more transparent, and more objective than previous human attempts—though quantifying fairness can sometimes be a painful first step, Townson says.

"Even uncontrolled AI doesn't necessarily make the process less fair," he explains. “The AI ​​is mathematically trying to mimic previous decisions, so it highlights exactly how unfair those previous decisions were. This ability can now be used to alleviate some of the imbalances we currently face.”

Sales and Marketing

Conversational chatbots are a particularly prominent example of AI in action and have already become an accepted part of the user journey on most websites – but the sales and marketing industry will get a lot more help from machines.

Artificial intelligence enables companies to perform tasks and change strategies in real time, Townson continues. Meanwhile, machine learning algorithms will automatically increase sales promotion or delay product launches that could cannibalize profit from other product lines.

In short, AI can recalibrate these types of decisions to generate additional sales, including products that were not previously promoted.

Defense

“The defense industry is going through massive changes,” says Townson. "Once they can fully implement AI risk management, there is real potential for acceleration."

The US Navy is already actively developing more than a thousand AI-related activities. "I think what would surprise most people is the extent to which artificial intelligence is being modified and developed within the Navy," says Brett Vaughan, chief AI officer for the US Navy. “However, most of these efforts lie in research and development. So in the highly technological and competitive environment of the modern era, we prioritize the rapid transition of these capabilities to the fleet.

While Vaughan is limited in what he can say, he does confirm that the US Navy is using AI in two areas: enabling autonomy in unmanned/robotic systems and improving the quality and speed of human decision-making.

Customer experience

Nearly half of the world's largest companies will use AI and ML to transform their customer experience (CX) over the next four years, according to IDC's Future of Customer Experience report.

"In a world of accelerated uncertainty, the next era of CX innovation will be led by those brands that drive customer value through empathy and deliver results for customer success," said Sudhir Rajagopal, research director, Future of Customer Experience at IDC.

An IDC report found that by 2026, 45% of the Global 2000 are expected to use AI/ML to drive customers into unfamiliar, novel experiences to improve sentiment metrics and brand upsell potential.

"Artificial intelligence technology is already sophisticated enough to change the way customers interact with companies and government," says Paul Henninger, director of connected technologies at KPMG UK. "Research and early implementation of AI-driven avatars, conversational AI and large language models will create truly different relationships between customers, their data and business services."

Asset management and investment

More than two-thirds of banks see AI and ML technology as key tools in tackling the growing complexity of trade oversight, as a lack of skilled compliance staff means manual checks are slowing down business.

Global financial firms are increasingly looking to technology for efficiency, with a clear desire for more automated workflows, but driven by regulatory requirements and exacerbated by volatility, a new study by Acuiti found in November.

"AI has already transformed trading in some ways through algorithmic trading," says KPMG's Henninger. “We will see the same complete transformation in how we think about meeting our retirement goals, as well as the kinds of outcomes – such as social and environmental outcomes – that investors want to be a part of.

“Driven by artificial intelligence that works for investors, asset management and other computing and tokenization technologies, the asset management industry will undergo a massive transformation over the next decade,” says Henninger.