AI is changing the world of business. From automating tasks and speeding up burdensome processes, through to ground breaking advances in diagnostics and smarter decision making – the opportunities are endless.
Experts predict AI may take one fifth of jobs by 2050, and not just jobs which are often classed as ‘unskilled’.
For businesses, AI offers real opportunities in their existing field and the scope to expand into new areas by building new machine learning models as diverse as creating content to predicting customer buying habits.
But it’s not just a question of ‘adding some AI’ into your business.
One of the biggest experts in this area is Laurence Moroney, the lead Artificial Intelligence Advocate for Google.
He’s now one of the worlds best AI Speakers and travels the globe to share solutions to the biggest challenges companies face when implementing AI – and how they can navigate them
1. Don’t get caught in the hype.
Laurence says it is important for businesses to think strategically about how AI can work in their area, instead of rushing in with the latest fad.
He says: “It’s hard to go onto social media nowadays without some tech bros out there showing you how, with a simple prompt, you can turn your business around, or you can make a whole new business, or you can become a gazillionaire using GPT. There’s also a negative hype where it’s going to destroy your business, it’s going to destroy your economy, it’s going to take over the world. And I think first and foremost is to try to figure out the signal amongst all of that noise.”
2. Understand the technology
Using AI in your business ‘requires a deep understanding of the technology’, Laurence believes
He says:. ‘It’s about education and trial and error and working with the technology, and understanding the technology is the first part of that. It’s my belief that you really need to go deep with the technology to understand exactly how to apply it for your business and your domain specific knowledge, how you can apply that along with AI technology, to come up with new and unique solutions, or better solutions, for what you already do.’
3. AI requires a different mindset to traditional computer engineering
Laurence says: ‘AI isn’t about writing code that’s going to execute an action directly, it’s about training a model which then makes predictions based on input data,’ Moroney explains. ‘It’s a very different mindset and your staff need to be equipped to understand that and to trust that process, but it’s not an insurmountable challenge.’
4. Fear amongst staff that they will be replaced
Laurence says: “People are worried that their jobs will be replaced by AI. ‘But staff within your business will begin to realise that AI will actually make them more powerful.’ That understanding comes with a caveat. ‘It’s managing that process that is going to be a challenge. There’s a great opportunity there, and the advice that I would give is to invest in those skills and invest in people who understand your business as well as these skills.’
‘Artificial intelligence will shape the future of work, making our existing staff much more efficient and allowing us to drive skilled people up the value chain. If you think about job roles that you have where there are tasks that are inefficient, there’s definitely low-hanging fruit there for AI to be a part of that.’