I have noticed that artificial intelligence (AI) has become a piping-hot topic of discussion over the past few months. However, the funny thing is you (yes, you) have been touched by this technology for over a decade in your everyday lives. In fact, like your credit score, this technology has been impacting your life behind the scenes, playing a powerful role in solving real-world problems in many industries for over 60 years.

From improving the quality of medical diagnoses to developing self-driving cars and finding new planets in outer space, AI has grown from its humble beginnings into one of the most revolutionary tools we have at our disposal today.

In this article, I will highlight how artificial intelligence is already being used in four industries to solve problems, increase efficiency and reduce the need for human labor.

 

p.s., At the very end of this article, I have included links to specific software (powered by artificial intelligence) that you can use in your industry to gain an advantage over your competition.

 

Accounting

The accounting industry is in the process of being revolutionized by AI. Accountants can and have been using artificial intelligence to perform financial analysis, tax preparation, and even fraud detection.

Technologies like OCR (optical character recognition) are currently being used to rapidly read documents and translate them into digital text. This technology has already been around for years but has only recently become affordable enough for widespread use by small businesses. 

Suppose you are currently working as an accountant or operate a small firm. In that case, you can actually use AI to automate a variety of mundane tasks such asks like payroll and auditing. AI software can serve you as an objective decision-maker who doesn't get bored doing repetitive tasks. 

Additionally, AI has been helping large accounting firms by rapidly finding patterns in data--like identifying tax fraud—processing large amounts of information from multiple sources. 

 

Using technology like this, a single accountant can compete with much larger firms that, for whatever reason, choose not to move with the times and adopt this technology.

 

Engineering

In civil engineering, large North American firms like Turner Construction, AECOM, and Clayco have been using AI systems to analyze past data from previous projects to formulate accurate budgets for construction. This gives them a massive advantage when tendering on projects as they can accurately scope out costs to ensure they retain profitability before bidding. 

In fact, when using AI in conjunction with BIM (building information modeling), AI-enabled tools can help designers automatically extract and analyze the data needed for design (such as material properties, environmental characteristics, etc.). Of course, this will allow you to create more efficient, cost-effective designs.

Honestly, if you are an experienced engineer/firm with a respectable portfolio of past projects, absolutely nothing is stopping you from adopting these technologies to improve the quality and profitability of your work.

 

Health Care

 

 

In the Caribbean, the healthcare industry desperately needs to consider how they can use these technologies to augment its operations.

Globally, artificially intelligent systems have been used in situations where no expert knowledge is available (or not enough). Between 2000 and 2012, researchers from University College London trained an algorithm using thousands of public records from patients diagnosed with cancer. After training their system, the team then tested their model against actual patient data from 2014-2016 and found that it predicted future diagnoses well above chance level accuracy (71% vs 50%).

I believe this is great use case for hospitals and medical institutions in the Caribbean, which have a tendency to be underfunded and understaffed.

 

Advertising

Advertising is a prime example of an industry that is already using AI to solve real-world problems.

Advertisers are using this technology to identify and segment audiences, helping them improve the targeting of ads. They are also using AI to enhance the effectiveness of ad placements by optimizing where ads appear on social media or websites based on how well they perform in relation to other content within those spaces (e.g., if an ad performs better than other content on a given webpage).

 

Conclusion

 

Now that you are aware of how artificial intelligence is, right now, disrupting your industry, will you continue allowing this technology to dictate the direction of your life, profession, and business behind the scenes? Or will you instead take the proactive approach? 

Contact me for a free consultation on how to use these tools to supercharge your career and business.

 

Resources

Accounting Software That Uses AI and Automation 

- Zoho Books

- Canopy

AI-powered software for Engineers

- BricsCAD

- How to use AI to speed up your BIM workflow

Medical Expert System (advice, chatbot, question generation, etc.)

- Visirule