Understanding Artificial Intelligence
Ali Imran
This writer is a founder and brand ambassador of Unifi Education.
Artificial Intelligence is the new buzzword in the entrepreneurial landscape. This reminds us of the dot-com bubble and how venture capitalists were injecting millions of dollars into startups just because it was something “online” – It was a new hype. We did have our share of very successful startups like Amazon and Google, but we also had the dot-com bubble crash, where millions and even billions were lost by venture capitalists as a result of the market crash.
Bubbles are created when a concept or phenomenon is so artificially hyped that people inject capital without any trajectory or proven track record of the company. During the 90s, people were willing to invest millions just on the basis of a company adding .com to their domain and going public. So we should be rather careful with the hype some of these buzzwords can have.
Artificial Intelligence or AI is a concept that garners similar attention, If not more, than the internet in the 1990s and early 2000s. However, the more important aspect that should be brought to the radar is the practical application of the tool. There’s a lot of hype that revolves around “AI” World Wildlife Day being observed to highlight importance of forests but there’s a lack of focus on the actual usage of the technology itself. If we are to benefit from Artificial Intelligence, we need to understand its basics and see where it applies to our life, personally and professionally.
Students from all walks of life need to understand and familiarize themselves with the concepts of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (MI) and observe how it’s impacting their lives and how they can leverage AI to build future products and services. Artificial Intelligence was initially taught as a part of computer science degrees in universities like Stanford, Now it’s emerging as a field of its own. AI should not be and is not confined to personnel of the computer science space.
Artificial Intelligence should be looked into and explored by students and professionals from all walks of life. They should try and understand how Artificial Intelligence is gradually or rapidly, in some cases, revolutionizing the world around them. AI is impacting the medical space, engineering, mathematics, and education, to name a few. It’s changing the way things were typically done in spaces. An example is scanning X-Ray images in the medical context. These x-rays were manually done and examined by doctors to give their verdict. AI technology can do x10 the work in seconds and this is the same work that multiple doctors had to do in hours.
If we are to stay abreast with the latest developments, we must learn at least the basics of AI and understand how it’s being implemented in our own professional space and how we can contribute – AI is the future. The core theme of Artificial Intelligence is pattern recognition: This means recognising patterns in complex streams of data. Once the patterns are identified, very accurate predictions can be made.
These patterns can save or help businesses earn millions of dollars. Afiniti is an Artificial Intelligence company, based in the US, with offices in Pakistan, which is helping companies optimize their customer experience by pairing caller agents with the customers they might be able to deal with in the best manner. So, it’s basically caller agent pairing.
This seems simple but translates to incremental revenue in millions and even billions in certain cases, depending on the scale and size of the company. Artificial Intelligence is the future and upcoming corporate leaders will be those who understand the technology and leverage it to the best of their ability.
