Enough already. There’s nothing “artificial” about AI (artificial intelligence), it’s just human intelligence programmed into a machine, designed and created by really intelligent people.
Start calling it…
Think about this for a minute, what’s really happening with AI? The reality? People are accelerating their ability to sift through overwhelming amounts of data across multiple sources, and extract what is most relevant based on their criteria or business objectives. It’s not artificial, it’s happening because some very smart people have developed algorithms and logic into a solution capable of exploring, extracting, analyzing, and presenting data in a more contextual manner. You still need to engage with the machine, input business rules, plans, etc., and…
When implemented properly, AI helps to provide visibility into an overwhelming amount of data faster; but, make no mistake about it, the machine is not controlling anything and not intelligent, it is merely an agent of the person or people creating and using it.
Algorithms and programmable logic do not replace the human brain, they are an extension of it; and machines cannot replace or replicate people when it comes to compassion, empathy, sympathy, love, and subjective reasoning. So stop thinking AI is anything other than a acceleration of analyzing data and enhancing a human’s intelligence and ability to understand, because that’s all it is.
Once you accept the reality, the practical application and use of AI becomes more obvious.
A business can begin to break down operational silos if they merge data into a central point, or data lake; providing AI the opportunity to more quickly parse data across sources, discovering anomalies, correlations, relationships, and dependencies people often miss. What good is a marketing solution that provides recommendations on personalize campaigns if it is not considering the merchandising, inventory, and logistical issues impacting any decision? In the same light, how valuable is a merchandising plan if it is executed without visibility into the marketing metrics around customer preferences and actions?
The real value of AI is the ability to see across data as if you are a single person running the entire business, and not as silo’d organizations marching to their separate P&L goals without any real concern for the overall success of the whole business. This is the real value, but it won’t be realized until companies both consider their organizational structure and impact on data management, along with their systematic structure and solution integrations.
So before everyone gets too excited and thinks a computer is going to either replace your job or make you perform any better; consider it needs to be able to think more like you, meaning, accessing and evaluating all data regardless of the source. At the end of the day, the really successful people, the really successful businesses perform because they look across all available data. The current challenge is this is often too time consuming, requiring analysts to create spreadsheets and reports explaining the content. The opportunity is in letting AI help in this time consuming part, elevating what could take days or weeks to understand, to just seconds or minutes. The end result are people and/or businesses capable of ACCELERATING their intelligence. And that’s not artificial, that’s just smart.
