During the long pandemic, the global population have consistently turned to artificial intelligence-powered technologies for their daily needs. Be it chat bots for uninterrupted customer service, drones for food and medicine delivery during a crisis, or mitigation of growing cyber attacks at the roots—AI has had a solution.

As AI increasingly makes machines smarter, human roles will gradually become more focused and machine-supported. The no- or low-code applications generated by machine learning-driven machines is just one example of a completely augmented workforce, where machines remove the need for highly specialized human employees, and offer valuable free time for human-only tasks.

While discussing the 7 big AI trends of 2022, Bernard Marr of Forbes particularly stressed the changing workplace due to the presence of AI. In the AI-augmented workplace, machines and humans work side by side, people communicate business problems to machines in natural, conversational language, smart cyber security devices protect all vulnerable network points, the immersive playground of the “metaverse” will be at our fingertips, citizen data scientists will dominate the workplace, and creative work like writing headlines or designing logos will be taken over by machines.

Groundbreaking Artificial Intelligence Developments

The author Dr. Tehseen Zia discusses some of the groundbreaking advances in AI. Conversational AI – which combines natural language processing (NLP), speech-recognition, ML and other ground-breaking technologies—facilitates easy interactions between humans and machines. Conversational AI promises game-changing customer-support services for the global business environment.

According to Report Linker, the conversational AI market is estimated to grow from “$6.8 billion USD to $18.4 billion USD by 2026.” The key drivers behind the rise of conversational AI are widespread adoption of multi-channel customer engagements, success of chat bots, and the need for continuous customer support.

This article about the next-gen conversational AI explains why voice-based conversational AI devices are needed in a predominantly text-based virtual-engagement environment.

Computer vision technology, which trains ML algorithms to recognize patterns in images and videos for classification purposes, has revolutionary prospects in many sectors like healthcare, agriculture, manufacturing, and self-driving vehicles. A Gartner Press Report states that computer vision technology signals the natural progression for heavily AI-invested businesses. According to this report, each of the surveyed companies plans to invest “an average of $679,000 over next two years.” Enjoy reading about more AI advanced in the agriculture sector.

Impact of AI Systems across Industry Sectors

Analytics Insight highlights machine learning’s power to train algorithms to predict future events based on past data without any human support. The impacts of such groundbreaking technologies are seen in:

• Cancer Research: AI has made significant inroads in cancer research and treatment procedures. With critical, data-driven insights provided by AI, medical practitioners can now deliver custom treatments to cancer patients. AI holds promise for further breakthroughs in future cancer research.
• AI-embedded Defense Systems: These can monitor risks, locate targets, and provide protection to a country’s borders in an unmanned security environment.
• Delivery Drones: This year, the drone delivery systems will go mainstream, transporting medical test samples, medicines, and other healthcare supplies much faster than humans driving on roads can do. During the pandemic, these drones have proven their future potential.
• Virtual Classrooms: These dominate the digital education space today. From independent study modules and small courses to full certifications and diplomas, “virtual learning platforms” have it. The biggest benefit of these online classrooms is that they can be accessed anywhere, anytime.
• AI Robots: AI robots have been deployed in the augmented workplace to enhance human productivity. While these machines handle repetitive business tasks with efficiency and agility, human employees are left to concentrate on complex problems that require the human brain.
• Self-driving Vehicles: Self-driving automobiles are routinely reinforced with high-performance features and safety checks for better performance on the road.
• AI for Traffic Management: AI technologies have delivered game-changing solutions for traffic management, including superior navigation devices, superfast information-processing systems, and timely delivery mechanisms.
• The VR world of the Metaverse: A user wearing VR goggles is transported to an imaginary 3D space, which brings the virtual and the real worlds together by using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technologies.

Artificial Intelligence Developments that Shaped the Past

In 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic struck the world, medical science was challenged to create a vaccine. Thanks to AI, the vaccine development time was trimmed down to just several months.

• Artificial Intelligence developments immensely helped the researchers analyze volumes of virus data in record time.
• Autonomous vehicles like robot taxis were commercialized and offered as a public-transportation service.
• NLP-powered communication devices (chatbots) went mainstream and enhanced the customer experience.
• Development of custom AI chips – these specialized chips can optimize processor performance for specific tasks like deep learning. This is promising for cloud service providers, who can take advantage of these chips to add value to their enterprise customer services while reducing cost of services.

You can take a peek at The AI developments that shaped 2021 to get more details about these AI advances.

AI Technology Benefits in Core Sectors

Here are some benefits of using AI technologies in the healthcare sector:

• Cost Savings: Almost one-third of healthcare costs originate from health insurance expenses and other administrative fees. With AI automating many of these processing tasks, the net expenses can come down significantly.
• AI-enabled Patient Care Research: AI tools enable high-speed analysis of large volumes of patient care data and past treatment records. Healthcare professionals can quickly extract relevant data and insights from large data sets and determine the best possible treatment procedures for particular patients.  
• Timely Alerts from Wearables: The wearable devices available in the market have smart embedded applications that analyze health data in real time and alert both users and their healthcare professionals about potential health problems.  

In the banking sector, AI applications provide huge cost savings, estimated to be $447 billion by 2023. Not only does AI save money for banking businesses, it also enhances the customer experience by enabling 24/7 customer interactions. AI also helps the investment banking and financial services sectors.

To learn about AI contributions in content marketing, review this link. AI tools can:

• Assist in content planning by identifying marketable opportunities
• Optimize social-media content by monitoring changes in search-engine and social media algorithms
• Assist in collecting high-quality, third-party content for curation purposes
• Help maintain consistent writing style and tone across content libraries and business functions
• Analyze market or audience data to make content recommendations to content teams
• Expedite the content production process by generating outlines and content briefs

Read about the smartest AI innovation of 2021, with in-depth explanation of the combined use of AI and RPA processes to automate routine tasks (intelligent process automation or IPA).

The Future of Artificial Intelligence

Bernard Marr, in his futuristic post, throws light on what is about to come in the AI development world. He mentions the metaverse, low-code AI, rising cyber security concerns, enhanced language modeling, creative AI, and the augmented workforce.

On a Springboard post, the author talks about the future impact of AI in the healthcare, retail, and banking sectors.

As author Jennifer Zaino explains, the existing trust deficit in AI-enabled decisions will only go away when the Explainable AI technology reaches an unquestionable level of maturity.

According to author Leah Kolben, more women will enter the AI field in 2022.

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