3 Ways to Compete on the AI Playing Field

We know that AI is coming. We know it’s going to change the way we do business. For many executives, though, the landscape beyond that is unclear. What are the next steps? How do you integrate AI into your business—and before the competition gets too far ahead?

The first thing to know is the competition will get ahead, if you let it. Those who start implementing AI into their operations now are likely to enjoy a lasting advantage, and those who don’t are going to find it more and more difficult to keep up.

So you need AI. But what do you do with it? Here’s three steps of AI-business integration to start you off:

1. Relieving administrative task burdens

This one is the most straightforward. Right now, managers spend an average of 54% of their time on administrative tasks, such as managing schedules or preparing reports. The advent of machine intelligence means all that time no longer needs to be wasted, freeing up managers to do more high level work involving real creative and critical thinking.

2. Analyzing available data

Everyone talks about the value of big data and the importance of leveraging it, but there’s only so much data a human mind—or schedule—can handle. With AI at your side, however, it’s possible to make use of data sets that were previously too enormous to ever even consider. For instance, AI could take all the transcripts from every single customer service conversation your company has ever had, and use those to generate predictions of service representative performance or customer behavior. No numbers are too huge for an AI to crunch.

3. Letting AI create new roles for itself

This one is the most in-depth way to implement AI, but also the one that best realizes the full potential value of machine intelligence. Traditionally, programmers have personally created the roles—and the rules—by which any piece of software runs. With the advent of machine learning, the software can over time create its own model with its own rules, more complex and nuanced than any human could write by hand.

Want to know whether a loan should be approved? The AI can learn to figure that out, based on a wealth of information beyond what could ever be kept in a human’s head. Not only does this give a company a lasting advantage, but one that gets stronger and more intelligent over time.

AI may seem daunting at the outset, but it’s easy to get in on the lowest levels of AI integration. Once you’re there, it’s just a question of going deeper—and the deeper in you wade, the better chance you stand against the competition.