Artificial intelligence (AI) has progressed rapidly in recent years, moving from the realms of science fiction into becoming an important part of many industries. Siri, Alexa, and Google’s Deep Mind reveal some of the huge advances that have been made in this field.
While AI isn’t yet a massive part of our everyday lives, it is becoming increasingly useful in the business world. A good example of this comes with Google’s use of Deep Mind to boost the efficiency of their own data centers and reduce the energy needed for cooling by 40%. In what other areas can we now see this technology being used?
Customer Support And Chatbots
One of the types of AI that has become widely-used is in powering chatbots. This is where a customer’s interaction with the company involves a natural, flowing conversation with a bot. The system needs to understand everyday questions and then provide simple answers to help out.
In retail, it has been suggested that the amount of sales achieved using chatbots could reach $112 billion by 2023. This figure comes from a Juniper Networks study in which they predict the sales number doubling annually as retailers make savings by moving over to automated processes. It is another way of making more money without lowering the quality.
The use of this software isn’t restricted solely to sales, though. They can also improve customer service by offering a speedy, tailored response on many issues. Businesses benefit from increasing their level of customer support without having to spend more on staffing to do so.
Cybersecurity Advances
The dangers of hackers breaching company websites and databases has been a major concern in all industries for a number of years. In 2019, some 8 billion consumer records were compromised, with Capital One and Zynga among the biggest companies affected.
Thankfully, artificial intelligence promises to help reduce this risk. By using machine learning and large quantities of data, a cybersecurity system can learn which behaviors to look out for and quickly adapt to emerging threats.
As new types of malware and hacking techniques are introduced, this approach can help to ensure that these changes are noticed and blocked speedily. Even the common tactic of adding a lot of useless code to try and disguise the true purpose of malware won’t fool AI.
Trading Robots
Trading is an activity that involves taking a massive quantity of information into account and spotting trends before making a move at the perfect moment. Therefore, it is an ideal industry for introducing the automation and efficiency that artificial intelligence brings.
The AI bot can be connected to an online trading platform, so that it is able to carry out the full process independently around the clock. The TopRatedForexBrokers site confirms that these tools can carry out tasks such as initiating forex trades, managing positions, and exiting trades.
This type of bot is increasingly common in other types of trading, such as stock markets and commodities. They have also appeared in the cryptocurrencies world, where the high degree of volatility means that bots such as Gekko, CryptoTrader, and Zenbot can be used to constantly check the market conditions.
Detecting Fraud
The Global Banking Fraud Survey published by KPMG in 2019 pointed out that identity theft, cyber-attacks, and card not present fraud were among the areas where fraud was growing most quickly. The trend for moving toward open banking and allowing third-party access to accounts is one of the new dangers in this sector.
In this case, AI software can be used to detect fraudulent activity very quickly. It needs to be shown what makes a transaction suspicious and can then improve its detection rate as it learns more over time.
The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners confirmed in 2019 that 13% of companies used AI and machine learning as a fraud detection aid at that time. However, their research revealed that a further 25% of the organizations they spoke to expect to introduce this in the next two years.
A Look To The Future
It seems likely that we continue to see artificial intelligence use growing in the industries mentioned above. At the same time, we can expect it to be introduced into other sectors too, as the benefits of doing so are discovered by many more companies.
