Artificial intelligence is here to stay. It has proven itself as a valuable and effective way to perform routine tasks in a variety of industries. While AI may not have poked its head around the corner of your office door yet, it doesn’t mean that it is not on the horizon as a tool to help unload some of your most arduous responsibilities.
AI has the ability to free up your times and provide accurate completion of routine skills. This year is expected to be the year that the technology heats up and hits desks, making it a possibility at your workplace in the near future. To understand how AI will truly impact your business in the coming year, a panel of entrepreneurs from YEC gave their thoughts on the following question.
How will artificial intelligence affect business in 2018?
Their best answers are below:
1. Create a More Customized User Experience
With AI on the minds of not only businesses, but also customers, it’s definitely going to become more aggressive in 2018. More businesses and brands will use AI to customize the user experience, while analyzing data, buying trends and browsing history. There will no longer be a need to ask for name, email and contact information, as this will soon all readily be available through the use of AI. – Zac Johnson, Blogger
2. Change How We Use Social Media
The biggest impact of AI will involve social media. The coming year will see a rise in real-time personalized content targeting with the aim of creating increased sales opportunities, mainly because AI can make use of effective behavioral targeting methodologies. Consider this: an AI-enabled marketing stack works in determining when people on any given platform start looking for new CRM software. – Derek Robinson, Top Notch Dezigns
3. Power Fraud Prevention
Fraudsters have elevated their game in today’s digital world. Luckily, the capabilities of AI-powered fraud detection tools are available to help businesses protect against sophisticated fraud schemes by leveraging automation, machine learning engines, natural language processing, speech and video recognition, to name a few. – Stephen Ufford, Trulioo
4. Predict Customer Behavior
Although AI is being used to predict customer behavior to some extent, it will get a boost in the future. Businesses will use AI to detect if a customer is willing to purchase the product, seeking support or switching to another provider even before they actually approach. The focus will be on making machine learning intense so that it appears more human for better engagement and successful deals. – Liam Martin, Time Doctor
5. Enable 24/7 Customer Support
With chatbots being employed to deliver 24/7 customer support, businesses can also incorporate this data into their CRM to gather more valuable customer insights. This data can then be used to optimize various touch points, including chatbot interactivity, creating a feedback loop of customer data. Ultimately, AI enables the ultimate customer experience by providing indispensable customer data. – Kristopher Jones, LSEO.com
6. Change News and Marketing Research
Other than that it’s the future, you don’t really know for sure, like any other disruptive mechanism. Bitcoin is a perfect example of that. That said, I see the business of news changing dramatically because of artificial intelligence. The same with marketing and customer behavior. That’s going to be the game changer, and you’ll see a lot of jobs as we know them become extinct. – Philip Michael, New York Equity Group (NYEG)
7. Further IoT Technology
Internet of things technology will be further integrated with blockchain for security. This will help fuel an explosion in innovation and consumer adoption. In particular, watch for more smart home products which will see IoT making further inroads into the everyday life of consumers. – Ismael Wrixen, FE International
8. Provide Easily Accessible Data Insights
Businesses can find it difficult to get a full-time data scientist in-house, but with AI you can have access to powerful insights on your consumer and marketing data for a fraction of the cost involved. Look at the new Google Analytics Intelligence feature. You don’t have to be skilled in analytics to find the information you need, now you can ask simple questions and get the answers you need. – Jürgen Himmelmann, The Global Work & Travel Co.
9. Increase Digital Commerce and Online Marketing
With the new Google Assistant, online shopping is becoming more convenient. It’s going to be much easier to tell your AI assistant to purchase something that can be delivered to your doorstep in one to two days. This means that companies will need to invest in optimizing their online product to compete with e-commerce competitors. – Patrick Barnhill, Specialist ID, Inc.
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10. Help Find the Best Job Candidates
AI is making it more efficient for everyone, from small business owners to HR departments at large companies, to find suitable employees. Screening and research that might have taken hours in the past can be done in seconds by software programs. Of course, hiring still requires live interviews, but AI can really make the initial stages of filtering candidates much more efficient. – Shawn Porat, Scorely
11. Improve Analytics Results
We have all this data and we don’t know what to do with it or how to get to all the patterns that are hiding in it. In 2018, artificial intelligence will go a long way to organizing, categorizing and patterning the data to help us get better insights. – John Rampton, Calendar
12. Enhance Online Security
As an enterprise IT infrastructure provider, I’m very interested in the way AI techniques, such as deep learning and generative adversarial networks, can be applied to online security. The threat landscape changes so rapidly that it’s impossible for humans to keep pace, but machines that can learn from huge data sets and react in real time stand a chance of keeping up. – Justin Blanchard, ServerMania Inc.
13. Help Financial Trading Decisions
Machine learning algorithms are making it easier to predict future trading decisions. By recognizing patterns, they are able to create strategies and adapt much quicker than humans. There are already a number of AI-based hedge funds popping up, and this is just the beginning. – Syed Balkhi, OptinMonster
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