This decade has been the decade of Artificial Intelligence. We came across terms like Machine Learning, Natural Language Processing, and Robotic Process Automation. But experts suggest that new innovations in the field of AI are going to find newer applications in the workplace. We are going to witness the powers of AI and ML being applied to the business environment more and more:

The idea that digital systems can learn and make intelligent decisions in itself is astounding. And because of that specifically, AI-powered tools and software are starting to accomplish tasks that are thought to be ideal or are reserved for human workers. AI and AI-based tools are expected to be the talk of the town for the next few years. We would see them be used for digitally transforming businesses and innovating new technologies. Without further ado, let’s see how AI and the related fields are going to change the way we live.

AI and Machine Learning Trends

Digital transformation of the office

Digital workers are growing all over the world. According to recent studies, digital workers, such as digital bots and AI-powered systems, are soon going to take over a large share of the industry. Analysts suggest the growth rate could become as high as 50% by 2022.

It is expected that as digital workers grow in number, their influence in various industry is going to become more and more prominent. More and more digital workers would start to take over the minimalist tasks of an office. The advantage of employing digital bots in place of human workers is that they would need less amount of training, and running time, and make fewer mistakes. But instead of completely taking up the places of the human resources they would cooperate with them – working alongside them while maximizing the end result.

AI for improving business processes

Process automation has been a common practice among businesses for streamlining their internal operations. But hyper-automation and cognitive automation projects need you to integrate AI-powered tools for reshaping and redefining the execution of the processes. If you think about it, Robotic Process Automation (RPA) in itself is anything but intelligent; it’s a simple rule-based system.

Cognitive automation requires new, cutting-edge tools built solely for that purpose. You would need AI-powered Control and Process intelligence technologies to achieve that. It would enable the workers to acquire the skill and knowledge for dealing with rather advanced challenges like reasoning, and natural language processing.

Automated AI development

We are expecting to witness a significant rise in innovations in the field known as automated AI. The aim of it is to use AI for automating the steps in creating, deploying, and managing AI models to help scale AI. What IBM calls ‘AI for AI’ is ultimately going to help enterprise-scale AI more widely in their organizations.

IBM has been one of the pioneers in automated AI. One of their tools launched back in 2019, ‘AutoAI’, is designed to automate data preparation, model development, and feature engineering tasks. It has been one of the key tools for data engineers for creating and deploying data models. Technological advancements in the fields of distributed deep learning are going to enable developers and data scientists to create AI engines more effectively and, more importantly, in less time. Automated machine learning is going to be the next in-thing making AI accessible to a wider range of professionals.

Rise of the Process Intelligence

Process Intelligence is one of the budding technologies of this decade, according to experts. Process Intelligence allows your organization to create a visual model of the internal processes using the data contained within the systems. It helps filter out the outliers, detect the bottlenecks, and predict future outcomes for easier decision-making.

The higher the complexity of the digital systems being employed at your organization, the higher the importance of monitoring the operations becomes. Technology systems that govern only a very specific aspect of an organization (e.g ERP or CMS) can provide visibility to only the specific processes that they have control over. To provide the holistic, in-depth insight you need to leverage the potential of Process Intelligence.

Human-AI cooperation

There is this hyped-up yet popular speculation everywhere these days – AI is the future job-killer and it is going to replace the human workforce with the mechanized workforce. Well, the future is going to be different that’s for sure. The hybrid – human and digital – workforce is alive and blooming. In the coming days, the human and the digital workforce are going to coexist and, even better, cooperate.

Organizations are working on implementing RPA and cognitive AI that can help deal with repetitive, high-volume tasks with ease. The hybrid workforce is going to grow as more and more use cases are made available.

Human-AI interaction

The secret to successful human-AI cooperation lies in the effective interaction between humans and AI systems. We have already become familiar with and accustomed to digital assistants like Siri, Alexa, and Cortana. In the coming days, we are hoping to see AI-based assistants for your work environments as well.

We are expecting to see AI-based tools being employed in more and more different spaces. As time passes, AI-powered systems would grow in capability making them acceptable in many uncontrolled public spaces. More of us would start to interact with AI, knowingly or unknowingly. AI would even be seen interacting with customers serving them information and providing services. Oftentimes it results in improved customer experience and higher customer satisfaction.

Improved cybersecurity

Hands down, cybersecurity has been one of the major pain points of this decade. With hacking and phishing attacks increasing exponentially every day, cybersecurity officers needed something new in their arsenal. AI is a shiny, new tool in their toolset having a significant gravity.

That being said, it’s by no means a silver bullet that can thwart every possible attack. It’s not going to solve all our security issues either. Experts predict that it’s going to be an important step towards advancing our current security system.