Artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering the very fabric of our existence
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Show and tell AI style

June 13, 2017 | By Franki Chamaki

Show and tell used to be my favorite time in primary school. It’s the one time a geek really gets to show his fellow students his awesomeness. So, I’ve decided to take the show and tell route to bring out the power of AI and how it is changing the world.

The ‘show’ is the image that headlines this blog which I created it in less than 10 minutes, using an AI powered tool called Autodraw by Google. Normally the drawing would not be much of a challenge to someone even slightly artistically inclined. But I confess I am not that.  It’s kinda strange, because my brother is the opposite, he is an architect and an artist.  Anyway, I was only able to do it because the tool read my rudimentary doodles and gave suggestions of what it thought I drew. To understand the power of AI, try your hand at creating a drawing, say a birthday cake, on MS Paint (I use a Mac, so I often use Pixelmator and the standard icons) and then do the same on Autodraw.

Artificial intelligence is fundamentally altering the very fabric of our existence. There is not a single aspect of our lives whether personal or professional that AI cannot significantly alter  or “augment” for the better. Take for example AI’s predictive analytics. The CIA is using an advanced version, to predict social unrest, extremist activities and threats to national security a week before they happen. If that reminds you of the 2002 Tom Cruise movie Minority Report, it is exactly that…except the prediction comes from an AI engine not psychics.

Businesses are largely embracing the benefits of AI. Take the financial sector for instance, where AI powered hedge funds have been in existence a while. Research shows these funds have begun to outperform their human counterparts year after year. Your savings are likely to earn more with an algorithm than a trained market analyst.

Another example I like to use is of Watson Ads and Campbell Soup on weather.com. With Watson ads consumers could interact with the brand to get personalized responses. A typical question could be “what can I make for dinner tonight.” Rather than serve up pre-canned responses that you can get on any cookery site Watson’s responses would consider weather, time of day, even ingredients on hand to serve up a unique personalized recipe.

Finally, I come to how AI is making an impact on retail business. A Harley Davidson dealer in New York found his sales leads increased by a whopping 2,930% when he used an AI-driven marketing tool. The increase came about as a result of an AI-driven marketing platform that works across digital channels like Facebook and Google. It measures and autonomously optimizes the outcome of marketing campaigns.   In the HBR story, an example was given that was cool, AI suggested changing very specific word elements in Ads that made a huge difference. They changed the word from “Buy” to “Call” which resulted in a 447% increase in response.  This means that AI is allocating resources to what is PROVEN and validated to work (through simulation and testing), thereby increasing digital marketing ROI.

At HIVERY too, we have used the power of AI to create unrealized profit in the retail business. Take for example our Vending Analytics tool. Created with the aim of optimizing vending machine profits, we seen an average increase of 15 percent in sales revenue and an average 18 percent reduction in restock costs for vending machines that use the system. We do this by analyzing data for each individual machine and optimizing the space, product mix and pricing formula per machine. That level of personalization is impossible to achieve without AI.

The way I see it, the goal of AI is to enable us to push the boundaries of what is possible by augmenting our cognitive thinking. The drawing would not be possible for me, just as a personalize recipe is out of the reach of most home chefs. So also the profits that we see accrue to our clients. That profit just did not exist before AI!

If you want to learn more about our solution then checkout my Slideshare on HIVERY’s secret ingredients

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