Artificial Intelligence in the Startup World
From Alexa and SIRI to self driving cars, AI is progressing rapidly. It is disrupting major industries like healthcare, finance, gaming, manufacturing, transport, customer service and many more. Robots are already driving cars and performing surgeries. And they are doing it better. According to an article on the verge, (https://www.theverge.com/2017/2/21/14687346/uber-self-driving-car-arizona-pilot-ducey-california) self driving cars are now picking up passengers in Arizona, and Lyft has declared that they will adopt complete automated driving in the next 5 years. Slowly as technology is advancing, and AI becoming better more efficient, it is expanding to all industries and areas. There has been an emerging fear that AI will soon automate and eradicate all jobs and according to a PwC report about 38% American jobs are at high risk of being taken over in the next 2 decades. So the question arises, are we going to become dogs? With our only jobs being sleeping, eating and reproducing? The answer is no. This is because once the manual jobs which require us to be mechanical and do the same things over and over again are handed over to machines, humans can direct their minds towards resolving important issues like completely eradicating diseases, poverty etc. We can then focus our energy and brain into thinking, strategizing and solving. The end goal is to make the earth a perfect world and robots are just tools for us to get there.
AI is a boon to us and we should make the most of it. Especially for entrepreneurs like me I feel that artificial can be very beneficial to starting a company and growing businesses. Some of the areas where it can help a business grow are :
AI in Sales :
Emerging big data tools can analyze the existing customers profiles and derive an intelligent set of target customers to pursue. Predictive account modeling can be great for a hiring roadmap as it lets you hone in on industries where it is easier to justify investment based on revenue potential. According to an article at hrb, (https://hbr.org/2017/05/how-harley-davidson-used-predictive-analytics-to-increase-new-york-sales-leads-by-2930) Harley Davidson used artificial intelligence and predictive analysis to increase sales by 2930%. For the company, the AI evaluated what was working across digital channels and what wasn’t and used what it learned to create more opportunities for conversion. Thus eliminating guesswork, and gathering, analyzing and optimizing enormous volumes of data.
AI in Consumer Research :
AI tools like “Wizer”, “Wordsmith” and ‘Boomtrain” are being used for advanced consumer research in many upcoming tech companies. These tools help in understanding the needs, reaching out to target audiences and providing deep insight into the minds of consumers by analyzing results. These tools are great for customer acquisition and to understand the consumer better, which then leads to increased profits. Complex machine learning algorithms are designed to learn from all surveys, interviews and customer relations to figure out the optimal way of reaching out to new and existing demographic.
Customer Service :
AI is transforming customer service and call centers. As virtual assistants become more knowledgeable and easier to implement, more businesses will begin to use them to assist with more advanced questions a customer or interested party may have. And thus the service becomes quicker and more efficient.
In its entirety, artificial intelligence has a growing impact on startup companies and has resulted in a wide range of benefits including reduced costs, increased productivity, meeting customer demands, greater agility, better decision making, increased efficiency sales and finally profit. AI is taking away the manual jobs freeing our brains to be used in thinking and coming up with new ideas and innovative solutions. The fear of losing jobs to machines is irrational and rather than taking away, it opens up many more fields and opportunities for us.
References :
https://www.salesforceiq.com/blog/ai-sales-teams
https://www.recode.net/2016/9/18/12955162/lyft-gm-self-driving-cars
http://money.cnn.com/2017/03/24/technology/robots-jobs-us-workers-uk/index.html
https://venturebeat.com/2017/06/09/ais-37-billion-market-is-creating-new-industries/
https://thenextweb.com/contributors/2017/06/07/ai-transforming-customer-service/#.tnw_3B6RfLoG
https://startupnation.com/grow-your-business/artificial-intelligence-impact/
https://www.flexmr.net/blog/marketing-strategy/2016/6/ai-market-research.aspx
https://disruptionhub.com/ai-and-sales/
2 comments on “Artificial Intelligence in the Startup World”
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Hi Arohi,
Really enjoyed the way you tackled the question of AI’s importance to startups. I certainly think, that open-source AI has expanded on the number of possibilities, and made it easier for small-scale entrepreneurs to grow quickly. On the point of AI’s impact on customer service, chatbots are an increasingly important topic. Here are two examples:
– Bank of America introduced Erica, a virtual banking assistant. Erica manages transactions and give personal financial advice
– Wells Fargo piloted a chatbot on Facebook messenger in April 2017. This provides account information for users.
The future of AI is exciting, and certainly probes the question of what’s next to come?!
Hi Arohi,
Really liked your take on whether we will become unemployed or what will happen as some jobs will be replaced by computers 🙂 I like you examples of how we can use machine learning in different aspects of our business to make it grow, a great topic. I mentioned a couple other areas in my blog post, such as software testing, marketing and in the product, as well. But with a growing demand for AI, do you think we will have enough labor to supply engineers to the market?
Thanks!