Artificial intelligence (AI) is clearly a growing force in the technology industry. AI is taking center stage at conferences and showing potential across a wide variety of industries, including retail and manufacturing. New products are being embedded with virtual assistants, while chatbots are answering customer questions on everything from your online office supplier's site to your web hosting service provider's support page. Meanwhile, companies such as Google, Microsoft, and Salesforce are integrating AI as an intelligence layer across their entire tech stack. Yes, AI is definitely having its moment.
This isn't the AI that pop culture has conditioned us to expect; it's not sentient robots or Skynet, or even Tony Stark's Jarvis assistant. This AI plateau is happening under the surface, making our existing tech smarter and unlocking the power of all the data that enterprises collect. What that means: Widespread advancement in machine learning (ML), computer vision, deep learning, and natural language processing (NLP) have made it easier than ever to bake an AI algorithm layer into your software or cloud platform.
For businesses, practical AI applications can manifest in all sorts of ways depending on your organizational needs and the business intelligence (BI) insights derived from the data you collect. Enterprises can employ AI for everything from mining social data to driving engagement in customer relationship management (CRM) to optimizing logistics and efficiency when it comes to tracking and managing assets.
ML is playing a key role in the development of AI, noted Luke Tang, General Manager of TechCode's Global AI+ Accelerator program, which incubates AI startups and helps companies incorporate AI on top of their existing products and services.
"Right now, AI is being driven by all the recent progress in ML. There's no one single breakthrough you can point to, but the business value we can extract from ML now is off the charts," Tang said. "From the enterprise point of view, what's happening right now could disrupt some core corporate business processes around coordination and control: scheduling, resource allocation and reporting." Here we provide tips from some experts to explain the steps businesses can take to integrate AI in your organization and to ensure your implementation is a success.
Take the time to become familiar with what modern AI can do. The TechCode Accelerator offers its startups a wide array of resources through its partnerships with organizations such as Stanford University and corporations in the AI space. You should also take advantage of the wealth of online information and resources available to familiarize yourself with the basic concepts of AI. Tang recommends some of the remote workshops and online courses offered by organizations such as Udacity as easy ways to get started with AI and to increase your knowledge of areas such as ML and predictive analytics within your organization.
The following are a number of online resources (free and paid) that you can use to get started:
Once you're up to speed on the basics, the next step for any business is to begin exploring different ideas. Think about how you can add AI capabilities to your existing products and services. More importantly, your company should have in mind specific use cases in which AI could solve business problems or provide demonstrable value.
"When we're working with a company, we start with an overview of its key tech programs and problems. We want to be able to show it how natural language processing, image recognition, ML, etc. fit into those products, usually with a workshop of some sort with the management of the company," Tang explained. "The specifics always vary by industry. For example, if the company does video surveillance, it can capture a lot of value by adding ML to that process."
Next, you need to assess the potential business and financial value of the various possible AI implementations you've identified. It's easy to get lost in "pie in the sky" AI discussions, but Tang stressed the importance of tying your initiatives directly to business value.
"To prioritize, look at the dimensions of potential and feasibility and put them into a 2x2 matrix," Tang said. "This should help you prioritize based on near-term visibility and know what the financial value is for the company. For this step, you usually need ownership and recognition from managers and top-level executives."
There's a stark difference between what you want to accomplish and what you have the organizational ability to actually achieve within a given time frame. Tang said a business should know what it's capable of and what it's not from a tech and business process perspective before launching into a full-blown AI implementation.
"Sometimes this can take a long time to do," Tang said. "Addressing your internal capability gap means identifying what you need to acquire and any processes that need to be internally evolved before you get going. Depending on the business, there may be existing projects or teams that can help do this organically for certain business units."
Once your business is ready from an organizational and tech standpoint, then it's time to start building and integrating. Tang said the most important factors here are to start small, have project goals in mind, and, most importantly, be aware of what you know and what you don't know about AI. This is where bringing in outside experts or AI consultants can be invaluable.
"You don't need a lot of time for a first project; usually for a pilot project, 2-3 months is a good range," Tang said. "You want to bring internal and external people together in a small team, maybe 4-5 people, and that tighter time frame will keep the team focused on straightforward goals. After the pilot is completed, you should be able to decide what the longer-term, more elaborate project will be and whether the value proposition makes sense for your business. It's also important that expertise from both sidesthe people who know about the business and the people who know about AIis merged on your pilot project team."
Tang noted that, before implementing ML into your business, you need to clean your data to make it ready to avoid a "garbage in, garbage out" scenario. "Internal corporate data is typically spread out in multiple data silos of different legacy systems, and may even be in the hands of different business groups with different priorities," Tang said. "Therefore, a very important step toward obtaining high-quality data is to form a cross-[business unit] taskforce, integrate different data sets together, and sort out inconsistencies so that the data is accurate and rich, with all the right dimensions required for ML."
Begin applying AI to a small sample of your data rather than taking on too much too soon. "Start simple, use AI incrementally to prove value, collect feedback, and then expand accordingly," said Aaron Brauser, Vice President of Solutions Management at M*Modal, which offers natural language understanding (NLU) tech for health care organizations as well as an AI platform that integrates with electronic medical records (EMRs).
A specific type of data could be information on certain medical specialties. "Be selective in what the AI will be reading," said Dr. Gilan El Saadawi, Chief Medical Information Officer (CMIO) at M*Modal. "For example, pick a certain problem you want to solve, focus the AI on it, and give it a specific question to answer and not throw all the data at it."
After you ramp up from a small sample of data, you'll need to consider the storage requirements to implement an AI solution, according to Philip Pokorny, Chief Technical Officer (CTO) at Penguin Computing, a company that offers high-performance computing (HPC), AI, and ML solutions.
"Improving algorithms is important to reaching research results. But without huge volumes of data to help build more accurate models, AI systems cannot improve enough to achieve your computing objectives," Pokorny wrote in a white paper entitled, "Critical Decisions: A Guide to Building the Complete Artificial Intelligence Solution Without Regrets." "That's why inclusion of fast, optimized storage should be considered at the start of AI system design."
In addition, you should optimize AI storage for data ingest, workflow, and modeling, he suggested. "Taking the time to review your options can have a huge, positive impact to how the system runs once its online," Pokorny added.
With the additional insight and automation provided by AI, workers have a tool to make AI a part of their daily routine rather than something that replaces it, according to Dominic Wellington, Global IT Evangelist at Moogsoft, a provider of AI for IT operations (AIOps). "Some employees may be wary of technology that can affect their job, so introducing the solution as a way to augment their daily tasks is important," Wellington explained.
He added that companies should be transparent on how the tech works to resolve issues in a workflow. "This gives employees an 'under the hood' experience so that they can clearly visualize how AI augments their role rather than eliminating it," he said.
When you're building an AI system, it requires a combination of meeting the needs of the tech as well as the research project, Pokorny explained. "The overarching consideration, even before starting to design an AI system, is that you should build the system with balance," Pokorny said. "This may sound obvious but, too often, AI systems are designed around specific aspects of how the team envisions achieving its research goals, without understanding the requirements and limitations of the hardware and software that would support the research. The result is a less-than-optimal, even dysfunctional, system that fails to achieve the desired goals."
To achieve this balance, companies need to build in sufficient bandwidth for storage, the graphics processing unit (GPU), and networking. Security is an oft-overlooked component as well. AI by its nature requires access to broad swaths of data to do its job. Make sure that you understand what kinds of data will be involved with the project and that your usual security safeguards -- encryption, virtual private networks (VPN), and anti-malware -- may not be enough.
"Similarly, you have to balance how the overall budget is spent to achieve research with the need to protect against power failure and other scenarios through redundancies," Pokorny said. "You may also need to build in flexibility to allow repurposing of hardware as user requirements change."
Further Reading
Business Reviews
Business Best Picks
See the article here:
10 Steps to Adopting Artificial Intelligence in Your ...
- Researchers create innovative verification techniques to increase security in artificial intelligence and image processing - European Research Council - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Who in Europe is investing the most in artificial intelligence? - Euronews - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- 4 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Members of Congress Can't Stop Buying (and Nvidia Isn't 1 of Them!) - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The Standard Names Porter Orr Second Vice President of Artificial Intelligence Strategy and Development - NRToday.com - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Meet Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang, the man behind the $2 trillion company powering today's artificial intelligence - CBS News - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- This Warren Buffett Dividend King Stock Just Invested $1.1 Billion Into Artificial Intelligence (AI) - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Joe Rogan Reveals What Could Be 'Game Over for the Human Race' - Newsweek - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- LegalTech Artificial Intelligence Market to Soar to $6.4 Billion by 2028: Global Long-term Forecast to 2033 - Strategic ... - Yahoo Finance UK - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Artificial Intelligence Tokens Stumble Again! Is The AI Hype Over? - Coinpedia Fintech News - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- CISA unveils guidelines for AI and critical infrastructure - FedScoop - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- IBM's Webinar: Cybersecurity In The Era Of Artificial Intelligence Keynotes - AiThority - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Being and becoming a good doctor in the age of artificial intelligence - Firstpost - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Pope to take part in G7 summit in June to talk Artificial Intelligence - Crux Now - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Pope Francis to attend G7 summit to speak on artificial intelligence - Catholic News Agency - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- 1 Unstoppable Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock to Buy and Hold Forever - Yahoo Finance - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Pope to bring his call for ethical artificial intelligence to G7 summit in June in southern Italy - The Associated Press - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Elon Musk Called Tesla an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Robotics Company. Does That Make It a Buy? - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Emulating neurodegeneration and aging in artificial intelligence systems - Tech Xplore - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Pope Francis to participate in G7 session on AI - Vatican News - English - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- A Once-in-a-Generation Investment Opportunity: 1 Bill Ackman Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock to Buy Hand Over Fist ... - Yahoo Finance - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Tesla Stock Investors Cheer Progress on Its Artificial Intelligence (AI) Future - Yahoo Finance - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- In Race to Build A.I., Tech Plans a Big Plumbing Upgrade - The New York Times - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- A Baltimore-area teacher is accused of using AI to make his boss appear racist - NPR - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- 3 Top Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Billionaires Jim Simons, Ray Dalio, and Israel Englander Are Buying - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- The iPad Pro can give us a big surprise with its artificial intelligence chips. - Softonic EN - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Could Soar 70%, According to Wall Street. Time to Buy? - Yahoo Finance - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Billionaire Bill Ackman Owns 8 Stocks -- and This Hypergrowth Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Isn't One of Them - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Artificial Intelligence Has Come for Our...Beauty Pageants? - Glamour - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- 3 Stocks to Grab Now to Ride the Artificial Intelligence Chip Boom to Riches - InvestorPlace - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- Is ASML's Big Sell-off a Warning Sign to Artificial Intelligence (AI) Investors? - The Motley Fool - April 29th, 2024 [April 29th, 2024]
- 3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks to Buy With $1,150 and Hold for Decades - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- This combines the power of artificial intelligence with human insights - finews.com - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Cohere Targets $5 Billion Valuation for ChatGPT Rival - PYMNTS.com - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- IMF: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Will Transform 40% of Jobs. Can Investors Capitalize? - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Cathie Wood Is Selling These 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks. Should You? - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- iShares Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Multisector ETF (NYSEARCA:IRBO) Shares Acquired by Creative Financial ... - Defense World - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Inaugural Plenary Meeting of States Endorsing the Political Declaration on Responsible Military Use of Artificial ... - Department of State - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- AMD Fell Today -- Is This a Chance to Buy the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock? - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Are Red-Hot, but Here's 1 to Avoid (for Now) - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- A Once-in-a-Generation Investment Opportunity: 1 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Growth Stock to Buy and Hold Forever - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Could Go Parabolic - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Artificial intelligence will radically improve health care, but only if managed carefully - The Hill - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Tennessee Makes A.I. an Outlaw to Protect Its Country Music and More - The New York Times - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- When Using Artificial Intelligence In Pharma R&D, Start With Identifying Problem To Solve - HBW Insight - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Why Super Micro Computer, Advanced Micro Devices, and Other Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Tumbled on Tuesday - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- 3 Billionaires Are Selling Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Nvidia and Buying These 10 AI Stocks Instead - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Nvidia Just Bought 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks. These 2 Stand Out the Most. - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- UN adopts first global artificial intelligence resolution - ARMENPRESS - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- This New Artificial Intelligence (AI) Chip Is a Massive Game Changer for Nvidia Stock - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Nvidia Led the First Phase of Artificial Intelligence (AI), but These 2 Growth Stocks Will Lead the Next Phases ... - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Meet Wall Street's Newest Stock-Split Stock, Along With the Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Likeliest to Follow in Its ... - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Amid Rumors of a Deal With Rivian, Apple Acquired This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Start-Up Instead - Yahoo Finance - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- UN adopts first global artificial intelligence resolution - CGTN - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- 1 No-Brainer Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock to Buy With $25 and Hold for 10 Years - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- 2 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Could Make You a Millionaire - The Motley Fool - March 22nd, 2024 [March 22nd, 2024]
- Is Intel the Best Artificial Intelligence (AI) Semiconductor Stock to Buy Before It Skyrockets? - The Motley Fool - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- The greater social implications of artificial intelligence - New Day NW - KING5.com - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- AI comes to the world of beauty as eyelash robot uses artificial intelligence to place fake lashes - Fox News - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Beyer Appointed To Bipartisan Task Force On Artificial Intelligence - Falls Church News Press - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Why Did Nvidia Invest in These 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks? Should You Buy Them, Too? - The Motley Fool - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Three key themes on artificial intelligence - Research Information - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- How Artificial Intelligence is transforming consumerism - WFLA - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- SAP names Philipp Herzig as chief artificial intelligence officer - CIO - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Unleashing the Power of Artificial Intelligence: Transforming Web-Based Applications for Enhanced Efficiency and User ... - Financialbuzz.com - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Koch Industries continues to accelerate its artificial intelligence initiative - The Business Journals - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Forget Nvidia: These 3 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks Can Be the Next Stock-Split Stocks - The Motley Fool - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Artificial Intelligence for small business focus of upcoming JWCC Lunch and Learn on Feb. 28 Muddy River News - Muddy River News - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Opponents Highlight the Environmental Impact of Artificial Intelligence - News-Press Now - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Generative AI's environmental costs are soaring and mostly secret - Nature.com - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Chapter Summary: Genesis of Artificial Intelligence and a Scientific Revolution: 1950-1979 - EIN News - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- What would Thomas Aquinas make of Artificial Intelligence? - ACI Africa - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- ChatGPT Predicted Bitcoin Price Will "Skyrocket" - Cryptonews - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Worried About an Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Bubble? Consider This Billionaire Investor's Advice. - Yahoo Finance - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- This Super Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock Could Be at the Beginning of a Terrific Bull Run - Yahoo Finance - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- 5 Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stocks That Could Make You a Millionaire - Yahoo Finance - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Will AI replace Colorado teachers? Here's what experts say. - The Colorado Sun - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Nvidia Could Be About to Counter a Big Artificial Intelligence (AI) Threat With This Move - Yahoo Finance - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- The Healthiest U.S. Pharma Companies: Ranked by RealRate's Impressive Artificial Intelligence - Medium - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- Down 84%, Is This Artificial Intelligence (AI) Stock a Buy After an Earnings Pop? - The Motley Fool - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]
- 'AI for Humans' may be the most entertaining way to learn about artificial intelligence - Fast Company - February 20th, 2024 [February 20th, 2024]