According to the US International Trade Administration, the UK artificial intelligence (AI) market is worth more than £16.8 billion, a figure that’s expected to increase to more than £800 billion by 2035.
Sue Williams, Managing Director at Hexagon Consultants, shares insight into how companies can navigate the challenges and successes of AI to ensure it is effectively implemented.
Current landscape
With one in six UK companies now implementing at least one Artificial Intelligence solution into its business practice, it’s evident that the use of the technology across UK businesses is accelerating. However, there remains a hesitancy amongst many organisations not just in implementing the technology, but also on how to ensure that it is rolled out effectively to help improve efficiencies.
Concerns include safety and privacy worries, financial investment and a lack of knowledge about how to capitalise on the capabilities and benefits offered by AI.
Challenges and successes
AI systems are playing an increasingly pivotal role in the effective running of organisations across multiple industries. To stay ahead of the curve, retain a competitive edge and align with changing consumer behaviours, firms must implement steps and strategies to ensure the smooth introduction of AI technologies into their operations.
Business leaders must arm themselves with as much information as possible on AI technologies, ensuring that they’re fully informed on the different solutions available to them and how they can potentially impact their business.
Boasting a holistic understanding of how AI technology works and in-depth knowledge of how to effectively utilise the systems to their full capabilities, will allow senior leaders to achieve the most from AI in the long run, ensuring that it offers tangible benefits and sustained success for the business.
Successful implementation can lead to improved efficiency, enhanced decision-making and innovations in both products and services thanks to the automation of routine tasks, insightful data analysis, and the development of enhanced personalised customer experiences.
In contrast, there remain many apprehensions around the adoption of AI and other automated systems, including concerns around a lack of human judgement, job losses, cyber security risks and technical challenges that prohibit leaders from taking the leap and applying the technologies in business.
How to successfully implement AI into a business
When it comes to the application of automated solutions in the corporate world, several strategic steps can be taken to guarantee a smooth and effective rollout. These include;
- Define your goals and objectives: Ensure you have established and outlined a clear purpose and expected outcome for the AI before you start. What do you want the technology to help achieve and how do you want the system to support your organisation long-term?
- Choose the right tool: Once you’re sure that AI is the right way to achieve your objectives, evaluate the available tools and technologies before making an informed decision. Select one that is capable of implementing our requirements, consider scalability, compatibility with existing systems and ease of integration.
- Start small: Begin with a small project to help understand how the AI system operates and build your expertise on the technology. Smaller projects are lower risk and can be used to confirm the feasibility and potential benefits of the AI solution.
- Balance innovation with practicality: Ensure your solution can be implemented and isn’t just a theoretical concept. Users are more likely to adopt AI solutions that are practical and immediately beneficial to their workflows.
- Ensure training data is high quality and diverse: Many modern AI systems rely on training data to build and improve their models. To create the best representation of a real-world scenario and avoid bias and generalisations, training data needs to be high quality and diverse to build trust and confidence in the AI system.
- User-centric design: Users are more likely to embrace and utilise a system they find helpful and easy to navigate. User feedback can be instrumental in refining AI systems, enabling the early identification of potential issues early, leading to better outcomes.
- Think about consequences: AI systems can significantly impact people’s lives. Unintended consequences can lead to harm, discrimination, or privacy violations. An ill-considered implementation could have operational risks, and economic impact and cause reputational damage.
- Establish continuous monitoring and maintenance: Measure the impact of AI implementation against the defined objectives, while also keeping the AI system relevant and effective by incorporating user feedback and data or environment changes. It’s also important to manage the system to remain robust and secure as this will enable early detection of any degradation in model performance or unexpected issues or errors.
The potential AI offers for businesses seems endless, with technologies developing and advancing continuously. However, business leaders need to consider all factors associated with implementing automated systems, including both the positive and potential negative impacts of adopting new processes within their organisation.
Employing the services of a specialist in AI technologies can help eke out potential challenges to applying the technology. Seeking expert guidance can help organisations stay informed on the latest automated systems to help identify the best possible solutions to meet requirements, and to help drive more streamlined, efficient processes that will lead to future business success.
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