The world is at the moment experiencing a drastic change due to the enhanced Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. They are no longer limited to science fiction films but are gradually part of human life. AI and ML can transform multiple industries and make our lives much better. Yet the intricacies and shortcomings of any new technology all need to be weighed in.
Benefits of AI and ML
Automation of Complex Tasks
AI and ML can do things that ordinarily only involve human thinking and intelligence, for example, voice recognition, decision making and predictive analysis. This means companies will reduce the amount of time and money spent in executing these tasks with better productivity. For instance, cognitive chatbots can deal with customer inquiries, which saves time for live agents to respond to customers while at the same time-saving time for the customers.
Enhanced Decision-Making
AI and ML are capable of processing large amounts of data leading to a particular decision being made. It helps hugely when they can analyze the data in a way that human analysts perhaps won’t. It does help identify the patterns, the trends, and the correlation of the data. This could increase the chances of making the right prediction in many sectors ranging from financial to health and marketing sectors. In other words, AI can help with decision-making and also determine market trends.
Personalized User Experience
AI and ML can further create a unique experience for the user using the data generated and his/her behaviour. In e-commerce for instance, where recommendations are based on users’ behaviours (such as browsing and shopping patterns), this is quite useful. It does not only positively contribute to enhanced sales and improved satisfaction of customers but also satisfies user requirements.
Improved Healthcare
There is a lot that AI and ML can bring to the context of enhancements of efficient healthcare response by way of patient outcomes and cost reduction. Deep learning diagnostic apps can help physicians detecting early disease and treating it better. Also, it can manage the distribution of the available resources in hospitals and enhance the admission discharge transfer functions, and decrease the turnaround time.
Environmental Conservation
As AI and ML can be used to accurately forecast natural disasters such as fire outbreaks and hurricanes, they can have positive effects in environmental conservation. They can also be used for monitoring of pollution, animal, plant, population and even the extent of deforestation. In this way, governments and organisations will be able to assess the sources of information based on the funding that they will allocate or the environmental systems and policies that they will be implementing in the future.
Challenges of AI and ML
Bias in AI Algorithms
A major bottleneck to AI and ML is the question of the algorithm being biassed or not. It was highlighted that when AI algorithms receive biassed data to learn from, the results produced are one plus more; they could; be biassed and even more intensified. For Instance, if a face recognition Algorithm is developed based on white males, then it would not be capable of recognizing faces of other races or sex. To this, AI developers have to be aware of the data they employ to feed into their models then take measures to purge it off biases.
Privacy Concerns
Organizations are realizing that AI and ML are popular and have been seeing questions around privacy and privacy of data. Businesses and institutions, which gather and evaluate the information of their users, need to provide clear information about how this information is being collected, used and safeguarded at the same time. Similarly, there should be effective laws and standards about how data can be used to protect data from misuse.
Job Displacement
With AI and Machine learning, there are some people that are worried that it will lead to huge job losses in areas like production, transport, and other call centers. However, anytime an industry is disrupted, some employment is asking for directions but at the same time, new employment opportunities arising from AI and ML include data scientists, AI researchers, AI developers, etc. Ministries and institutions cannot sit back, and allow people to remain in the job market in vain, especially now there is a shift in growth of jobs from traditional sections to IT facilities.
Lack of Understanding
A lot of people still don’t know about AI and ML and those people have spawned a lot of myths and superstitions surrounding how AI and ML are actually used. It is crucial to increase people’s literacy level in terms of understanding what AI and ML are, and what options are available and inapplicable for practical use. This may go a long way in creating public confidence in these technologies and making sure those working on the creation and implementation of such technologies are doing so in the right manner.
Conclusion
AI and ML are dominating the world of technology but maybe they will be a great blessing for society and bring us a lot of positive benefits. AI and ML have some of the advantages which solve a problem within any field, they can automate complicated processes and improve decision making. However the evolution of these technologies has their own hurdles which need to be considered such as issues such as, bias in the algorithms, privacy violations, employment due to automation, and what people do not know about them exist. Their appropriate solution lets us build AI and ML to be safe and effective to apply, bringing more value to people’s lives and minimising potential risks.
