AI technology is important because it enables human capabilities – understanding, reasoning, planning, communication, and perception – to be undertaken by software increasingly effectively, efficiently and at low cost. The benefits of AI range from improving customer service and experience, automating processes, reducing costs and time, boosting productivity, increasing sales, designing and evaluating the scope of marketing strategies, improving decision making, among many others.
Today, the amount of data that is generated, by both humans and machines, far outpaces humans’ ability to absorb, interpret, and make complex decisions based on that data. Artificial intelligence forms the basis for all computer learning and is the future of all complex decision-making. As an example, most humans can figure out how to not lose at tic-tac-toe (noughts and crosses), even though there are 255,168 unique moves, of which 46,080 ends in a draw. Far fewer folks would be considered grand champions of checkers, with more than 500 x 1018, or 500 quintillions, different potential moves. Computers are extremely efficient at calculating these combinations and permutations to arrive at the best decision. AI (and its logical evolution of machine learning) and deep learning are the foundational future of business decision-making.