“It is seeping into our lives in all sorts of ways that we just don’t notice… We are just getting better and better at it, and we are seeing that happen in every aspect of our lives, from medicines to transportation to how electricity is distributed… And, if properly harnessed, it can generate enormous prosperity for people, opportunity for people, can cure diseases that we haven’t seen before, can make us safer because it eliminates inherent human error in a lot of work.” ~ Barack Obama, former US President, on Artificial Intelligence
Obama was right in saying so, and we indeed are moving ahead at great speed in moulding our life around artificial intelligence. Robot science has always been the basis for science-fiction novels/movies, and though man has not reached Spielbergian levels of expectations in technological advancement, they surely have advanced and are progressing to a level wherein artificial intelligence and machine learning have become an inherent part of day-to-day life activities.
Many may not think of how AI is involved in contemporary life, than just being something that only tech giants are focused on. If you have shopped online, used video or music streaming services, social media, navigation technology, or any of the voice-activated digital assistants, then know that you are being encountered by AI — the behind-the-scenes tool that has made our life easier.
Here are some of the many ways in which AI is used in everyday lives:
Commuting
Transportation space has already been using AI for a while, and now there has been a sharp increase in use cases of AI within this industry.
From aircraft to car-makers, to parking lots, and more are increasingly embracing AI in their services and products. Several persistent challenges across the industry, such as safety, pollution, reliability, and efficiency, are now being solved with the help of AI, which further has the potential to play a big role in developing and deploying more new and innovative measures to tackle the hurdles.
Google Map navigation, ride-hailing applications such as Uber or Ola are a few of the many use cases that are driven by AI.
The Chinese Smart Panda bus is another one of the many examples of AI being deployed in the transportation space. This smart bus operates across 10 cities and drives hundreds of passengers every day all by itself.
Healthcare
Artificial intelligence and machine learning have ushered in a new era of clinical quality and breakthroughs in patient care.
To begin with, it has made clinicians more efficient when delivering care, and more aware of nuances.
AI is reinventing and reinvigorating modern healthcare through tools that can predict, comprehend, learn, and act fast, be it to find new links between genetic codes or to propel surgery-assisting robots.
AI and machine learning has turned out to be a boon for this industry and has endless applications in this space. Some of the use cases already in place in this industry are leveraging AI to efficiently diagnose and bring down errors; several firms are utilizing AI to develop new medicines; AI-robot assisted surgeries improving surgical precisions; streamlining patient experience; and data library for healthcare, among many others.
Banking
The historically change-resistant banking sector is witnessing a huge disruption due to technological advancement, especially artificial intelligence.
AI has transformed every aspect of banking and has made its processes faster, safer, and more efficient.
Many may be unaware of the ways financial institutions use AI and machine learning, but most have interacted with their bank’s customer service chatbot, which runs on AI.
Customer support and front office are majorly impacted by AI, while fraud protection has been another vital area where AI has been deployed. AI and machine learning are also helping banks in lending and risk management.
Social Networking
This is a space where AI and machine learning thrives in, as it is used to identify how users interact and also to understand how consumers can be targeted.
One of the major advantages of deploying AI in social media is its automation capabilities, which helps in content creation, curation, or related processes, making its usage more productive.
Image recognition, competitive analysis, social listening, providing optimized content, and tracking customer behavior and their psychology are just a few examples of how AI works behind the scenes to influence social media networks.
Each social media network uses a variety of algorithms to make its platform more engaging to the end-user.
If you have been given the apt suggestion for tagging your friend on a photo posted on Facebook, know that machine learning is doing the work through facial recognition.
All daily usages on any of the social media platforms, from connection suggestions, to posts related to your search or even job suggestions, are all done by AI-driven tools, without which these platforms wouldn’t have been this engaging and successful.
Online Shopping
AI is revolutionising the way one shops online, especially the search and customer service experiences.
Machine learning and deep learning are now being leveraged by e-commerce websites and retailers to better the user experience of online consumers.
AI tools being used to perform complex tasks without the active supervision of humans. Developing customer-centric visual searchers, voice assistants, chatbots, personalisation, recommendations provided, filtering fake reviews, and re-targeting potential customers are among the many use cases of AI in the online shopping world.
We have only touched the surface of examples of AI in our day-to-day life, and certain industries have far more habitual interaction with AI than what we have explained here. Experts predict that as we move ahead AI will only become more integrated into our lives and has the potential of powering an industrial revolution.
