Is it time to introduce A.I into your company?

Is it time to introduce A.I into your company?

A.I. or more formally Artificial Intelligence. Its the hot topic right now here in the Tech World. A brief look at job websites for I.T for any major city, and you will see that they are screaming for Data Scientists, Senior Python Devs, or just anyone whom might know how to unlock the mysteries of Machine Learning.

For non tech mere mortals, the thought of A.I. in a company can bring about a climate of fear and mistrust. “They’re going to replace everyone with A.I!” screams my partner. “A.I is seriously dangerous” once complained Mr Elon Musk. Thanks to the likes of Amazon, we also have the mental image of an army of robots moving around the office, busy laying off employees and performing some spring cleaning.

So, with that in mind, could a move towards A.I send the wrong signals to a company’s employees? Not so, I argue. When you start seriously learning about A.I, and in particular, Machine Learning, there is somewhat an anti-climax. Gone are the hopes of building the next Terminator. If I had to summarize Machine Learning in one sentence, it would be “clever statistical use of your data”.

Every company has data. About their customers, their products, their sales history as examples. In the recent past (or the present for some), you would have office managers staring at Excel spreadsheets trying to make sense of it all. In one organisation I worked for in a previous life, fellow employees referred to them as “Professional Excel Viewers”.

Machine Learning simply takes your data to the next level of understanding, rather than relying on human eyes. You want to know which products are “risky” for certain markets, and not others, then use supervised learning. You want to know which questions are most asked on your company website, then use Natural Language Processing. Are there trends in sales for certain products, use unsupervised learning to find out why.

What is clear from the jobs market is that A.I is being sought after by a multiple of different companies. Those companies which embarce A.I. will understand their own data better, and in turn, understand their market better. This will make them stronger than their competitors. With this said, I like to think that, with every A.I Product that CodeCoda releases, I am making our client’s employees’ jobs more secure, not less.