AI to change way of doing business
Artificial Intelligence (AI) is seen to transform the way businesses work amid the disruptions brought about by digital revolution, consultancy and outsourcing services providerAccenture said.
Based on Accenture's Technology Vision 2017, AI has the potential to drive up economic growth, thus the need for policymakers and business leaders to prepare for and work toward a future with AI.
AI systems are advanced computing systems that are programmed to display specific intelligent operations.
Yesterday at the Transformation Summit held in Marco Polo Plaza Cebu, Arvin Yason, managing director for technology at Accenture, discussed how disruptions I such as AI and Automation are impacting and transforming the way businesses are done today.
He also shared trends and insights how companies can embrace digital technology to benefit their operations.
In an interview at the sidelines of the event, he however, said that AI cannot totally replace human workforce.
"It will totally replace human workforce. Humans will always be there," Yason said, noting that people are still needed to understand the various business functions and situations.
For his part, JP Palpallatoc, the company's digital lead in the Philippines, said the intent really of AI is to boost productivity.
"The intent really is to amplify, enable and empower people to do more," he said in the same interview.
He said AI can successfully help businesses if used properly.
AI is the technology behind driverless cars, drones and voicerecognition software.
It is defined as the capability of machines to imitate human cognitive functions in doing simple to complex tasks.
The business process outsourcing (BPO) industry is one sector seen to be affected by AI that is predicted to make some call center functions obsolete.
While this may affect the industry's voice segment, Accenture's Palpallatoc said that the human component will always be there in the operations.
He said queries that AI cannot address are automatically directed to persons, thus human workforce will still be present.
While this looks to be a risk to industry as automation is predicted to affect the BPO's lower-end jobs, this however presents opportunities for the BPO sector to move up its value chain.
Yason said continued partnership between the industry and academe is key to create the right supply of workers and skills needed by the changing business environment.
The BPO industry in its roadmap has targeted to teach 1.8 million people in employment and hit $50 billion in annual revenues by 2022.
Furthermore, according to the Department of Science and Technology, use of AI technology ranges from robot control, medical diagnosis, remote sensing, scientific discovery, and stock treating, among others.
There has been an increasing use of chatbots nowadays, which are capable of giving adaptive responses and bringing queries to human operators. Chatbot is one system that uses AI.
Accenture has pointed out the changes in the business environment due to disruptions brought about by digital revolution.