Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the ability of machines to display human-type intelligence such as recognizing patterns in a dataset and drawing insights from it. For instance, autonomous machines or systems that operate on their own can be classified as applications of AI. With the help of AI, machines can make decisions and take action based on their training pattern.
AI-driven systems are becoming incredibly popular as automation makes things easy for humans. AI also eliminates multiple repetitive tasks from both professional and daily lives. The objective of AI is to allow humans more time to spend on things that matter while allowing AI to take care of repetitive and iterative tasks.
Eventually, with robotics becoming a more accepted solution for daily businesses, AI along with robotics might be even used for providing banking services, fixing machines immediately, carrying out cleaning operations, and even selling products. Yes, robots will eventually be selling things to us. Meanwhile, robotic bank tellers will start helping us out with basic banking services, which will decrease the pressure on banks and enable them serve more customers.
There are many practical applications of AI in healthcare and medical research. These AI-driven systems are now essential for using hospital resources and clinical data as effectively as possible. Hospitals that have adopted AI-driven technologies can now cater to more patients than ever before, and that too, much more effectively with the help of these AI solutions.
We have come a long way in terms of technological progress in the field of AI and sectors such as Manufacturing, Engineering, Defence, Robotics, Finance, and Space Exploration have gotten significant assistance.
How AI is Transforming Different Industries
AI has had a tremendous impact on companies across industries. Many sectors have started setting benchmarks that require AI-enabled technologies in daily business operations. Using AI has become the industry standard in recent times.
Let us take the example of the security and surveillance industry. Security solutions companies of all sizes (large, medium, or small-scale) in this industry have started providing their clients with AI-driven systems. A lot of these AI solutions are software-based and are prepared by security companies themselves for facial recognition and object detection.
The security technologies that were only available to MNCs with big budgets and the authorities (Police/Military) are now available to smaller businesses and homeowners as well. AI has become essential and a necessity rather than a luxury or an experimental product. From monitoring factories and project sites to securing smart homes, AI is being used for more robust security solutions.
AI also empowers companies with the ability to gain crucial insights from data in an automated fashion. Data-driven decisions help companies by giving them an edge over their competition. Thus, very effective business decisions can be made with the help of real-time insights gained from large data sets, which is only possible with AI. Many industries that use analytics have started using AI for processing, analyzing, and visualizing data.
Another one of the important Artificial Intelligence trends that we have been seeing is its adoption in daily business processes and even in our day-to-day lives. The way we interact with our applications and our devices has completely changed. Tasks are easier to complete, and we can access digitized content and media quicker than ever.
In manufacturing and production, autonomous robots and machines have started replacing humans as these machines are faster and more accurate. Similarly, autonomous vehicles and drones are becoming more and more popular. According to Tesla, the chance of an accident is reduced by ten times if a Tesla’s autopilot is engaged.
The current trends in Artificial Intelligence within the healthcare sector imply that around 33% of clinical tasks can be automated easily. This will help save the precious time of clinicians and doctors. Tasks such as imaging, diagnosis, and analysis can be finished in record time, providing a better healthcare experience for patients.
Many hospitals still rely on analogue systems and manual updates, but this will soon change. For example, doctors can save up to 50% of their time by not needing to update EMRs or take notes.
Facts and Figures Around AI
The global market for AI is growing at a rapid pace. Just the global AI software market’s revenue (not all AI-driven services) is estimated to grow by 21.3% from last year (2021). Based on Gartner’s estimates, the global AI market will touch $62 billion in 2022.
MNCs, startups, and governments are investing in this sector and thus, innovation too will never cease in this sector. Individually, AI will start making more inroads into the markets of all other IT and communications processes. For instance, AI’s market in the telecommunications industry is expected to grow at a massive CAGR (Compound Annual Growth Rate) of 47.33%.
Other AI-driven sub-fields have also witnessed tremendous growth and progress. Let us take the example of how much we have been relying on our virtual assistants such as Siri (or Google Assistant or Alexa) and AI-driven searches on platforms such as Google Search. The global revenue of the virtual assistants market has increased by 14.7% in 2022 to a massive $7.12 billion.
Modern problems require modern solutions. Thus, in a similar fashion, knowledge management systems (KMSs) have grown extremely fast as well. KMS grew by 31.5% in 2022 to a whopping $7.18 billion. This is a huge difference from last year’s (2021) 17.5% growth.
8 Current and Near-Future Real-World Applications of AI
AI has hundreds if not thousands of theorized applications. A big chunk of them have already been applied in the real world and have experienced tremendous success. AI is used across sectors such as marketing, agriculture, IT, telecommunications, customer service, education, manufacturing, analytics, finance, robotics, healthcare, and more.
The list goes on when it comes to AI-driven systems as AI has been rapidly being adopted everywhere. AI can be integrated into any process with repetitive tasks or can be used to automate ones that follow a workflow. Fundamentally, if the amount of variation in the set of actions is not too high and if the training data is of high quality, AI can be implemented everywhere.
Let us check some of the latest real-world applications of AI:
1. Manufacturing and RPA: Manufacturing is one of the sectors that has benefitted the most from AI and hyper-automation. With the help of automated evaluations, monitoring, and maintenance, companies also save a lot of money and time. Production can be assisted by robots and arm-like machines.
When it comes to Robotic Process Automation or RPA, companies from all across the globe have invested in automating various repetitive tasks. Analog and manual business tasks will also eventually become automated with bots or AI-driven digital robots.
2. Cleaning and Hospitality: Companies such as Walmart have started adopting AI-driven robots for cleaning their stores, while hotels have started using robots for delivering products to their patrons. Even restaurants are using AI-driven cooking robots and robotic servers.
It is an amazing time to be alive as we slowly see AI-driven machines take over all kinds of service tasks around us, giving us more time to relax. There are even robotic dog feeders, robotic nannies, and cleaning bots for personal homes.
3. Logistics and Warehousing: With the AI industry trends we are noticing in computer vision and Deep Learning, it is expected that we will be able to use robots and drones for complex deliveries soon. This is especially useful for reaching locations that humans cannot easily access.
With more trained AI robots, companies can delegate warehousing duties as well. Robots now being developed are extremely effective, as products or goods can get heavily damaged otherwise. This is especially true for stuffed warehousing spaces and heavy materials.
4. Medical Research and Healthcare: AI and techniques such as Machine Learning or Deep Learning are also used for studying diseases, simulating side effects, developing vaccines, and researching genomics as well. Treatments, patient monitoring, and especially diagnosis have benefitted a lot from various applications of AI.
Hospital administrations also end up saving more money with more efficient use of resources and the staff can provide better critical care to patients. Even though ML and AI are not replacing medical staff anytime soon, these systems do help make the jobs easier to do for medical personnel.
5. Cyber Security: Hackers have been getting better at accessing protected data and it is becoming easier to find vulnerabilities inside systems. However, companies trying to secure their digital assets have also started automating the identification of these vulnerabilities and security compromises. With AI, companies can easily identify bugs, loopholes, and glitches that can allow hackers to penetrate the cyber defences of an organization.
AI also helps power systems to handle real-time threats by securing compromised areas immediately. This helps companies save both time and money by not needing to depend on security analysts as much.
6. Customer Service: AI has been used for implementations such as chatbots and service representatives for quite some time. In modern times, companies have even started relying on AI for advanced technical assistance and customer support.
NLP (Natural Language Processing) and NLG (Natural Language Generation) are two important domains that are enabling better customer service and are promising more innovation in this sector. Our voice assistants will also get more advanced and powerful. Google has recently come up with a concept (Year in Search 2021) of providing insights based on last year’s activity, thus helping you make better decisions in 2022 and the years to come.
7. Creative AI: Even though AI is generally used for repetitive tasks and exploratory processes, AI can also be trained to be creative. AI has already started generating artwork or 3D models and the creative abilities of these AI systems are increasing.
These artificial artists can now create vastly different artwork and concepts that are far away from the original training data. Similarly, AI-powered tools are also capable of making content, writing stories, and producing music.
8. Education and Training: Education is one of the main sectors where AI will be used to its full potential. AI can provide unbiased assessment in education This is great as every student will be receiving the same amount of attention and be treated equally.
Now, coming to the technical side of things, AI can be used for advanced applications of AR or Augmented Reality. AR and even VR (Virtual Reality) have been proven to be excellent for educating children as well as for training working professionals. With VR, we can emulate hands-on experience and we can be taught by artificial instructors or teachers.
Initially, AI was only used for engineering, research, analytics, and some niche domains. However, in the recent decade, the average human has become highly dependent on AI as well. AI-driven systems are assisting us on our phones, inside our applications, in our offices, and inside our homes.
Many think that AI will replace many working professionals or even fully replace jobs. While it will no doubt make certain jobs that require large human capital obsolete, it will also play a big part in creating new as well as newer jobs. Especially to support, develop and empower AI systems. Many companies are also shifting towards fully augmented workforces (hybrid workforces). It is a great time to be involved with AI or think of innovative solutions to real-world problems as companies are spending considerable resources to progress to the next step.
You can easily learn how to build innovative ML-driven AI models and other applications of AI after gaining the necessary skills from a well-designed comprehensive Artificial Intelligence course.
Upskilling in AI will prove to be fruitfil, especially due to the amazing opportunities and prospects this domain offers and is poised to offer. A great first step is checking out the Hero Vired Data Science, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence program. It sets the foundation for the key concepts of these topics and focuses on real-world application of the learning.
