Artificial intelligence (AI) has a wide range of uses in businesses. How each individual business applies it varies as do the results. Many people still associate AI with science-fiction dystopias, but that characterization is waning as AI develops and becomes more commonplace in our daily lives.

While acceptance of AI in mainstream society is a new phenomenon, it is not a new concept. The modern field of AI came into existence in 1956, but it took decades of work to make significant progress toward developing an AI system and making it a technological reality. However, experts aren’t exactly sure what AI means for the future of business, specifically as it relates to blue-collar jobs.

In business, AI has a wide range of uses. In fact, most of us interact with AI in some form or another on a daily basis. AI is disrupting virtually every business process in every industry.

As emerging technologies proliferate, they are becoming imperative to maintain a competitive edge. AI is expected to take digital technology out of the two-dimensional screen and bring it into the three-dimensional physical environment surrounding an individual.

Rather than serving as a replacement for human intelligence and ingenuity, AI is generally seen as a supporting tool. Although AI currently has a difficult time completing common sense tasks in the real world, it is adept at processing and analyzing troves of data much faster than a human brain could.

There is no doubt that AI has become part of the business world and is here to stay. The potential of AI in terms of economic benefits is unrivalled. This emerging technology is even considered by many to be more important and impactful than the internet was. It is also no surprise that AI is increasingly involved in decision-making, either as a tool, advisor or even manager.

These same traits make AI highly valuable throughout many industries – whether it’s simply helping visitors and staff make their way around a corporate campus efficiently, or performing a task as complex as monitoring electronic health records to diagnose potential life threatening diseases.

Explainable AI allows users to comprehend and trust the results and output created by machine learning algorithms. “Explainable AI” is used to describe an AI model, its expected impact and potential biases. Why is this important? Because the results can have an impact on data security or safety.

Melody K. Smith

Data Harmony is an award-winning semantic suite that leverages explainable AI.

Sponsored by Access Innovations, the intelligence and the technology behind world-class explainable AI solutions.