Let’s take a step back, to take two forward! Understanding Artificial Intelligence

We all know the world of Artificial Intelligence is evolving but, what does it actually mean to our lives and our businesses?

We’ve become familiar with a narrative around AI threatening jobs, how super intelligence could be a potential danger to humanity and ultimately, how the world of AI is a long way off for the majority...

Yet the reality is we are interacting with certain forms of AI every day in many different aspects of our lives; Google maps, Uber, Alexa...even your email spam filter is AI driven!

And what we call “AI” – big data and machine learning – is not actually intelligent, but systems that essentially look for patterns in data, generating predictions and not explanations.

This is a stark contrast to the story-telling nature of human brains, and the prospect of AI becoming self-aware is currently far from sight.

Meaning, we get all the great benefits of AI without the doom of robots taking over our lives!

To really reap the benefits of AI, we need to recognise its strengths and shortcomings. AI is powerful, but it's also limited. AI can be expensive and difficult to adopt, especially for small businesses, which don’t have masses of data and powerful computers that machine learning relies on.

When it comes to larger enterprises, it can take time to move away from legacy systems and embrace new technologies.

Although these facts don’t lessen AI’s potential, they are slowing its adoption into everyday business...

As we’ve already seen, AI technologies can improve parts of our everyday lives on a more tangible level. Modern AI techniques power search engines, voice assistants and the algorithms that help identify unwelcome posts on your social media!

Arguably, every business has aspects of its processes that can be automated or enhanced through the use of AI.

This year has seen a fundamental shift in the recruitment world from a candidate-driven market to a role driven space, where there are more candidates than you can shake a fist at!

We need to automate parts of the recruitment process to simply deal with the volume while maintaining a streamlined process.

This is where AI steps in; from chatbots that answer customer queries to automated email replies, data entry and speech recognition tools that transcribe text – rather than replacing skilled workers, AI capabilities can help businesses become more efficient.

As an industry, we’re not at a stage yet where the recruitment process can be totally automated and powered by AI but, there are definitely certain aspects that could benefit significantly from some AI and automation love.