Artificial intelligence (AI) offers many benefits across various industries. For example, AI can aid health care companies in diagnosing diseases or help product companies analyze consumer behavior and market trends to make accurate predictions about product sales.
What makes this possible is automation. Instead of manually poring over data, professionals can use automation techniques to automate tasks and process much more information. And with the introduction of AI methods, automation is becoming smarter and can offer even more benefits.
Artificial intelligence (AI) might sound like a competitor to human intelligence, but they work in sync. Rather than replacing the need for people, AI supports human productivity.
To get the most out of the newest AI tools and apps, we explain how they can help automate business tasks. You’ll learn what AI automation is (and how it differs from normal automation), how companies use it today, and some of its impacts on the future of work. This guide also explores applied use cases across several industries.
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What is AI automation?
AI-powered automation combines AI technologies and other tools to automate business processes. This automation can occur through software—in which AI systems analyze data, learn from it, and make decisions—or through hardware, such as robotic process automation (RPA) in the physical world.
AI automation uses AI techniques like machine learning algorithms, natural language processing (NLP), and computer vision to process and learn from large amounts of data. Once an AI application processes that data and builds an AI model, it can direct intelligent decision-making based on what it learned.
These abilities help drive innovation in many industries. For example, AI is helping in the discovery of new drugs in health care, while the automobile industry is seeing new advancements in autonomous driving.
As AI becomes more efficient, it will better handle larger volumes of data and speed up the progress of different industries.
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Is AI the same as automation?
AI and automation are terms used interchangeably at times, but they aren’t the same.
Traditional automation doesn’t use AI techniques to operate. Software engineers and robotics experts use a predefined process and their skills to define the behavior of computer systems.
These techniques make the phrase “work smarter, not harder” a reality by making technology appear smart. However, these tools follow predefined routines given to them by their designers. While traditional automation makes work seem smarter, it’s not intelligent. The program or robot can’t accomplish a task if an automation engineer doesn’t define an action.
AI automation changes that by giving automation systems a way to learn. Some tasks they complete are autonomous and aren’t defined by the designers.
Instead of relying on instructions, AI automation tools use data to develop ways to accomplish tasks. AI can adapt its abilities based on the environment without human input—giving it far more flexibility and power than human-designed automation.
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Benefits of AI automation in business processes
The right tools to minimize and streamline work can make running an efficient business easier. Businesses can use AI automation to reduce workloads and take care of customers.
Some benefits of AI automation include:
- Enhanced productivity. Running a business without the help of tools can be time-consuming. AI can take on more repetitive tasks, such as data entry and data analysis, so that workers can focus on higher-impact work.
- Better customer experience. Serving customers means providing the correct offers at the right time—which isn’t always easy if businesses have to analyze large amounts of data. AI automation can digest large amounts of information about customers to help create personalized interactions that better serve the customer experience.
- Better decision-making. AI automation can help process information about businesses and industries much faster than humans can. By feeding data to AI, businesses can get help with forecasting, future product trends, and other industry information. This data can then inform their decision-making.
- Cost savings. The time spent working on redundant tasks has an opportunity cost. Working with AI to handle these tasks can remove bottlenecks that delay business processes. Replacing business workflows with AI bots can reduce the need for manual input and help businesses identify inefficient areas that cost money.
Image Credit: Jacob Wackerhausen/Istockphoto.
Challenges of embracing AI automation
Automating processes using AI has many benefits. But before jumping into AI automation, you should look at the challenges of embracing this technology.
- Data privacy concerns. AI systems often need access to sensitive business and customer data to function; however, using third-party, cloud-based automation platforms can potentially expose this data to privacy breaches. Companies and users should know and comply with data privacy laws and regulations. Additionally, they should carefully consider the security measures taken by third-party vendors.
- Labor market impacts. AI automation can potentially displace jobs, particularly those involving routine tasks. This might drive impacted workers to acquire new skills. Companies should invest in training, reskilling, and upskilling their workforce to help them adapt to the changes brought about by AI.
- Transparency. Many advanced AI systems—especially those using deep learning techniques and complex neural networks—are often “black boxes,” meaning their processes can be complex and difficult to interpret, even for AI experts. This lack of transparency can be challenging in contexts where explainability and understanding of processes are essential.
- Implementation challenges. Implementing AI automation can be complex, requiring specialized skills and expertise. Companies may face challenges in finding the right talent and understanding the limitations of AI.
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Use of AI automation across industries
Let’s look at a few industries where automation and AI are making some of the most significant impacts.
Health care
AI automation offers health care professionals new ways of diagnosing and treating patients.
One area where AI is making a big impact is disease detection. AI algorithms developed by organizations like Zebra and Google DeepMind can analyze patient data and search for abnormalities to detect disease with high accuracy.
AI automation is helping health care providers better serve patients. For instance, patient monitoring tools (like Biofourmis) offer doctors a way to remotely monitor patients, collect real-time data, and gain insights into potential health issues.
Surgeons can now also use robotic tools to assist with surgical procedures. These tools allow surgeons to take precise actions during surgery and reduce the risk of errors.
New AI tools can even advance medical breakthroughs by helping discover new drugs. AI can model drug interactions to help discover breakthrough treatments.
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Finance
With the vast amount of data available in finance, AI can automate financial processes to increase efficiency and find trends that help institutions make better decisions.
One area is assessing risk. Lenders may have difficulty vetting borrowers when they have many applications to process. AI tools can automatically look through a potential borrower’s financial history and quickly determine how big a risk they pose for a loan, speeding up the underwriting process.
AI also promises to make finance safer. Research by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) shows fraud is rising, costing consumers more than $10 billion lost to scams in 2023—a 14% increase over 2022 losses. AI can help prevent fraud by learning from previous financial transactions and finding abnormal behavior that indicates fraudulent activity.
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Manufacturing
Manufacturing has benefited from traditional automation in past decades. This field will see many advancements due to AI automation in the coming years. AI can help businesses plan their operations and manage their equipment using AI to predict when things may go wrong.
Forecasting is one area where this will matter the most. AI is great at taking historical data and extrapolating what will happen in the future. Manufacturing businesses can use these insights to manage their supply chains and inventory levels to optimize customer service and cost balance.
Another helpful tool offered by AI-powered analysis is the ability to do predictive maintenance. AI tools can monitor the tools businesses use to watch how they perform—notifying when the best time is to buy replacement parts, which machines need regular maintenance, and if there are any operational inefficiencies. This information can reduce downtime and increase output.
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Retail
Retail stores are seeing increased uses for AI automation, helping with customer support and operational efficiency.
Take inventory management, for instance. If a retailer wants to optimize their inventory, they need to order enough products to meet demand and avoid buying too much, which ties up money in unsold inventory. AI applications like Addepto can analyze large datasets to learn how many sales to expect in a given time, allowing businesses to order the right amount of inventory for their future needs.
Rideshare applications like Uber and Lyft use dynamic pricing to adjust prices based on demand. AI looks at data to determine how high a price the market will bear and comes up with the optimal pricing for different situations and locations.
Image Credit: Addepto.
Marketing and advertising
Marketing automation with AI can help marketers get more done and create better ads for their audiences. Much of the work marketers do is learning who they need to target and building marketing campaigns that appeal to them—something AI tools can help accomplish.
One aspect that offers many benefits to marketers is generative AI. Generative AI tools use large amounts of creative data to create content for marketing campaigns. Marketers can input their tone of voice, information about their products, customer data, and other relevant information to have AI create personalized marketing campaigns.
These tools are also easy to access. Microsoft and OpenAI released the chatbot ChatGPT at the end of 2022. Since then, many new tools, such as ChatGPT, the GPT API, and similar AI tools, have been used to create content for many purposes.
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The future of work and AI automation
AI has a much larger impact on the world than simply allowing businesses to do more. AI can also impact the workforce. These are some impacts you can expect as AI automation gains more adoption.
- Job elimination. One job of AI is to remove the need for manual and redundant tasks, streamline processes, and increase efficiency. As AI increases in usage, some jobs may go away and not return.
- Job transformation. In many cases, jobs may not go away—instead, they’ll transform into something new. These jobs require different skills from workers and business owners to interpret new data and make different decisions. Professionals must adapt to these changes and upskill to adapt to an AI world.
- Small business growth. One of the biggest challenges small businesses face is not having the resources of large enterprises. However, as AI becomes more accessible, that may begin to change. Entrepreneurs can get more done without the resources required by large companies.
AI automation stands to make a big impact on many industries. AI allows companies to analyze huge amounts of data, use what they learn to make new decisions, and teach computer programs and hardware devices to take action on their own.
Whichever use you have for AI automation, you can use the newest technology to make lasting changes to your business and help your team get more done each day.
This article originally appeared on Upwork.com Resource Center (Upwork is a company that helps businesses find talent and people find work) and was syndicated by MediaFeed.org.
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