The Marriage of Artificial Intelligence and Customer Experience
Artificial intelligence is an emerging technological field which promises to transform and enhance the way we do business and interact with the world around us.
Once viewed as science fiction, the more pragmatic concept of artificial intelligence (A.I.) dates back to 1950, when British scientist Alan Turing posed the question: “Can machines think?” Since Turing, A.I. has developed in structure and purpose and has enabled numerous practical applications that extend, expand and enhance human thinking, reasoning and actions.
Processing big data
Our collective thinking and reasoning capacity is completely overwhelmed by how much data we are producing and collecting — numbers, language, images, text, biometrics, facial expressions, video, sound, intonations, etc.
Our current computational technologies can manipulate that data, but how it eventually gets analyzed — and what decisions should be made from it — remain largely the domain of human thinking.
Filtering into everyday life
Machine learning, a foundation of A.I., seeks to teach computers to think and learn like humans and, in doing so, provide necessary diagnostics, guidance and recommendations to human decision making. Machine learning has played a critical role in data analysis by crunching through huge volumes of information, looking for and validating patterns almost impossible for a human to perceive.
Today A.I. is finding roles in nearly every industry. It is improving health care by analyzing everything from diagnostic images, pharmaceuticals and genomes to interacting with, and responding to, a patient’s speech, expressions and emotions. For retailers, it’s offering personal assistant tools for enhancing customer engagement and improving customer experience. It’s safeguarding businesses against fraud and cyberattacks, identifying patterns of possible threats and providing appropriate defensive responses.
Future effects of A.I.
Research firm International Data Corporation predicts that U.S. enterprises will cumulatively realize estimated savings of $60 billion by 2020 as a result of employing A.I. and that associated revenues for A.I. platforms will generate about $1.4 billion in revenue by the end of this year.
Market intelligence firm Tractica forecasts cumulative A.I. revenue of $43.5 billion during the ten-year period from 2015 through 2024, and Market Research Store predicts revenue of $40 billion in the single year of 2022. Whatever the exact outcome, the impact of A.I. technologies will become more pervasive and will help improve life for consumers and profits for businesses.