From BI to AI: Accelerating your business with Artificial Intelligence
24 de April de 2020
24 de April de 2020
Technology never stops progressing. Every day, it evolves and gains a greater presence in different areas of our day-to-day lives and the economy. In particular, Artificial Intelligence has consolidated its status as one of the strongest growing technological trends. This is due to the fact that, without out a doubt, it is an area of innovation that is transforming world and the way we buy and sell.
How does AI influence businesses and how can companies accelerate their growth using it? To find out, we look back over the online conference led by the lecturer on Data Science on EAE’s Master in Big Data and Analytics, Montse Llos i Bombardó.
Before focusing on the main subject, the lecturer touched on various topics by way of an introduction. She explained that, in the digital age, technology is influencing everything, adding that coronavirus has accelerated the transformation of a large part of the business world. “Telehealth is an example of the advances being made during this situation. In the space of just a year, it will accelerate to an extent that would otherwise have taken 5 years”.
She then gave an overview of the most common software and programs that use AI nowadays. Siri, Amazon recommendations, Facebook advertisements and optimization offered by Google Maps through its applications are just a few of the most common examples. “AI has advanced but people are still scared of it. It is like what happened with elevators at the beginning. People didn’t believe that a box held by cables could move them between floors, which gave rise to the job of elevator attendant, to increase their confidence in the invention”.
In terms of the definition, Llos i Bombardó explained that AI refers to machines “that can perform tasks that are characteristic of human intelligence:
These machines and programs are used in an endless list of fields, such as in the following key examples:
So, how does Artificial Intelligence work? This is not an easy question to answer but, as the expert Montse Llos concluded, Artificial Intelligence and digital transformation require data and it is thanks to the information gathered so prolifically through big data and small data that such software can lead to revealing conclusions that can be used to improve businesses, companies and economies.
However, this data must be “organized and classified, otherwise it it very hard to extract information from it”. She added that using third-party data is also very useful, as it often expands our vision and shows us the situation from various angles.
With respect to using data to optimize businesses, Llos i Bombardó explained that it is extremely important to bear the context in mind. A set of data may lead you to make certain inferences but, seen from a different viewpoint, the same data can lead you to draw other conclusions. Therefore, it is essential that we decipher and evaluate the data based on the context and business metrics.
Moreover, she emphasized the importance of applying a “360º vision for making decisions, in which you achieve an in-depth insight and can therefore analyse the correlations and causalities of the data obtained correctly”.
Lastly, she finished by underlining that “the important thing about data is that it offers value, that it has the capacity to contribute towards growth”.