Artificial intelligence has been all the rage during the past decade and is expected to rise even further. Besides human-like robots and self-driven vehicles, AI transforms every industry, from fintech to marketing.
This technology helps business owners automate mundane processes without human supervision, detect errors before they escalate, analyze vast amounts of data for valuable insights, etc.
In 2022, 37% of businesses use AI to manage their operations and boost performance. But what do we know about this decade of rapid artificial intelligence growth? In this article, we have expanded on the key challenges and results of AI evolution, fascinating examples of artificial intelligence in business, and how this technology helps various industries achieve their goals.
Past Decade of AI Development: Timeline of Rapid Progress
During the past decade, AI has been helping businesses make better decisions and extend their capabilities. Let’s dive deep into the timeline of AI evolution and learn more about its core challenges and results.
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2010
That year, Apple acquired Siri for more than $200 million, integrated it into the iPhone 4S, and started the era of digital assistants. Today, Siri can tell you a bedtime story, identify a song, and send text messages. In 2010, Siri could understand a limited number of phrases, check the weather, and set the alarm.
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2011
IBM Watson, a question-answering computer system, outpaced two experts and won Jeopardy, the renowned US quiz show. This fierce battle between the machine and humans proved the ability of computers to understand and interpret the context.
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2012
In 2012, Jeff Dean and Andrew Ng used 10 million unlabeled screenshots from videos to teach a neural network to recognize cats. Specialists connected 16 000 computer processors and fed this network with various pictures to make it happen.
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2013
Tesla revealed Autopilot’s features on its Model S, a battery-powered sedan. With fascinating abilities to park itself, predict road emergencies, and turn on the air conditioning in advance, this announcement had been anticipated by the market, investors, and drivers.
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2014
With more businesses using AI, Amazon released their virtual assistant Alexa to benefit from this promising trend. It has evolved from a speaker for music control to a full-fledged digital assistant.
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2015
Elon Musk established OpenAI, a research and deployment company. Whether you need to detect and fix bugs in source code, make an ad copy from a product description, or classify items into categories, OpenAI can help any business evolve.
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2016
That year, Hanson Robotics created a human-like robot Sophia. Being an outstanding mix of engineering and art, Sophia gives unique responses to any question or situation, identifies emotional expressions and faces, and estimates people’s feelings.
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2017
The Facebook AI Research lab trained two chatbots to make them negotiate with each other. The chatbots stopped speaking English during the process and came up with their custom-made language to boost their conversational strategies.
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2018
In 2018, Waymo’s autonomous cars reached 10 million miles on public roads. These vehicles were trained to select the safest routes and navigate urban environments, but sometimes they required human drivers to control them and prevent traffic from stacking up.
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2019
Google researchers cooperated with Northwestern medicine to use an AI-powered algorithm and train the system to process tomography scans and identify lung cancer. It can spot the disease in the initial stages or predict if a patient is likely to develop it later.
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2020
OpenAI released GPT-3, a sophisticated language model capable of creating resumes, writing effective marketing emails, and simulating natural conversations to skyrocket customer service. The model can also use a brief text description to write code.
Top Examples of Artificial Intelligence in Business
By Implementing AI in business operations, companies can benefit from increased forecasting accuracy, automated recruitment, better customer communications, and enhanced cybersecurity. This technology is not all about tech organizations — industries like marketing and human resources can incorporate AI in their strategies too.
Let’s find out how AI helps businesses achieve their goals and deliver meaningful results:
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Sales
After embracing AI in your sales processes, you can increase leads by an average of 50%. AI can help your team automate mundane tasks like meeting scheduling and let specialists concentrate on closing deals.
Here are some examples of artificial intelligence in sales:
- Enhanced customer support. AI-powered chatbots can boost sales by 67%, send your prospects customized emails, and resolve simple queries without human involvement.
- Sales forecasting. Analyzing customer interactions and historical data, AI algorithms will provide precise predictions about market demand, new prospects to reach out to later, and deals that are most likely to close.
- Personalized offers. With AI, you can analyze your customers’ buying behavior and search histories to show them tailored recommendations and products similar to what they are looking for.
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Marketing
Marketers can use AI to get more valuable insights about their target audiences, attract relevant leads, and skyrocket conversion rates. Over 60% of customers are willing to use AI for better interaction with brands, so it’s high time marketers implemented this technology.
Take a look at the most significant examples of artificial intelligence in marketing:
- Effective audience analysis. Analyzing your customers’ preferences, pain points, feedback, and credit scores, you can always target them with gripping ads, build a solid emotional connection, and engage them to recommend your brand to others. Your marketing strategies will become more accurate and efficient.
- Personalized website experience. Using AI, you can investigate your users’ locations, devices, buying history, and interactions with your website to detect patterns and provide them with the most relevant products, notifications, and content.
- Increased campaign ROI. Marketers can gain the most meaningful results from data and benefit from them in real-time. AI is a fantastic tool for detecting the most relevant ad placements, finding marketing channels where users are active, and obtaining detailed reports to enhance future campaigns.
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Accounting and Finance
Almost 80% of business owners claim that AI-based accounting software is one of the critical factors in enhancing their organization’s productivity. Artificial intelligence helps accountants reveal hidden patterns and automate repetitive tasks like categorizing transactions by transforming the financial landscape.
That’s how accountants can benefit from implementing AI:
- Eliminate time-consuming tasks. Experts can stop spending their resources evaluating expense reports, analyzing documents, and reconciling accounts. Thus, accountants can focus on more strategic activities like competitive position monitoring and customer profitability analysis.
- Predictive analytics. It will help specialists anticipate possible outcomes, make accurate predictions, and develop precise demand planning. Predictive analytics is also an excellent tool for providing clients with solid financial advice and setting up accurately estimated budgets.
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Human Resources
With countless resumes and data to analyze, HR managers can use AI to spot the perfect applicants much faster. Here are some examples of what HR specialists can achieve using AI:
- Choose better candidates. AI-powered algorithms will analyze applicants’ job experience, soft and hard skills, interests, and career goals to identify a pool of ideal candidates.
- Eliminate hiring discrimination. Computers and algorithms are impartial, making them a perfect match for unbiased recruitment. With such unprejudiced shortlists of applicants, HR managers will drive diversity and inclusion, make more fair decisions, and find experts with the right competencies faster.
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IT Operations
Applying AI to IT operations and tasks can help teams work more efficiently and detect issues before they affect users. That’s how IT businesses can benefit from using AI:
- Reduced operating costs. AI-powered software maintenance tools can help specialists spot and eliminate any threats before they do real damage. Without slow and time-consuming manual management, it’s easier to fix bugs in the initial stages and reduce operating costs.
- Faster digital transformation. Whether you want to move from on-premise to cloud computing or need to migrate from a monolith architecture to microservices, AI will help you manage your data and reduce operational friction.
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Contact Centers
Contact centers need reliable AI solutions to understand their leads and clients, resolve urgent queries, and boost loyalty when dealing with a vast amount of data. Here are some ways to benefit from adopting AI:
- Prioritize queries. With tons of requests, it can be challenging for support reps to detect the most urgent ones and assist customers quickly. AI algorithms can recognize sentences with a top-priority indicator that requires an immediate response. It can be phrases like “I want to stop cooperating with your company because…”, “I need to get this order today”, or “I want to make a complaint”.
- Reach out to relevant leads. Trying to contact people that are not interested in your services can be frustrating. AI models will analyze your target audience and help you find high-quality prospects that are more likely to interact with you. You can also benefit from chatbots to present personalized offers and answer questions.
How AI Helps Businesses Grow
Besides data analytics and accurate forecasting, AI can help companies scale their operations in various ways. Now that you understand how different niches can benefit from AI, let’s find out how you can skyrocket your business with this technology.
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Strong Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence will help you detect relevant rivals and gather information about their strengths and weaknesses. You can also track their actions like marketing campaigns, significant events, and product launches. It will enable you to find out what your target audience is saying about your competitors, use their flaws to your advantage, and spot new marketing channels.
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Price Optimization
AI helps businesses define optimal prices to remain competitive and keep customers loyal. Factors like brand awareness, market demand, and seasons affect your price, so it’s crucial to adapt it on the fly according to real-time data.
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Great In-Store Experience
If you have both online and physical shops, you have a chance to take the regular in-store experience to new heights. AI models can analyze your consumers’ data and let you know about their last visits and favorite products. It will help you provide them with personalized discounts and recommendations, loyalty programs, and digital displays with product information for more thoughtful decisions.
Create Advanced AI Solutions With LITSLINK
Using AI in business, you can scale up your brand and make it more profitable and recognizable. It’s much easier to lead any industry with advanced analytics tools, innovative automation software, and intelligent chatbots.
Whether you require a reliable AI solution to strengthen your HR processes or solid accounting software for better planning, LITSLINK is ready to make your idea happen!
Besides data analytics and accurate forecasting, AI can help companies scale their operations in various ways. Now that you understand how different niches can benefit from AI, let’s find out how you can skyrocket your business with this technology.
Strong Competitive Intelligence
Competitive intelligence will help you detect relevant rivals and gather information about their strengths and weaknesses. You can also track their actions like marketing campaigns, significant events, and product launches. It will enable you to find out what your target audience is saying about your competitors, use their flaws to your advantage, and spot new marketing channels.
Price Optimization
AI helps businesses define optimal prices to remain competitive and keep customers loyal. Factors like brand awareness, market demand, and seasons affect your price, so it’s crucial to adapt it on the fly according to real-time data.
Great In-Store Experience
If you have both online and physical shops, you have a chance to take the regular in-store experience to new heights. AI models can analyze your consumers’ data and let you know about their last visits and favorite products. It will help you provide them with personalized discounts and recommendations, loyalty programs, and digital displays with product information for more thoughtful decisions.