CHEAT SHEET:

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

by Brandon
Vigliarolo

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ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
BRANDON VIGLIAROLO

Learn artificial intelligence basics, business use cases, and more in this beginner’s guide to using AI in the enterprise.

Artificial intelligence (AI) is the next big thing in business computing. Its uses come in many forms, from simple
tools that respond to customer chat, to complex machine learning systems that predict the trajectory of an entire
organization. Popularity does not necessarily lead to familiarity, and despite its constant appearance as a state-of-
the-art feature, AI is often misunderstood.

In order to help business leaders understand what AI is capable of, how it can be used, and where to begin an AI
journey, it’s essential to first dispel the myths surrounding this huge leap in computing technology. Learn more in
this AI cheat sheet.

What is artificial intelligence?

When AI comes to mind, it’s easy to get pulled into a world of science-fiction robots like Data from Star Trek: The
Next Generation, Skynet from the Terminator series, and Marvin the paranoid android from The Hitchhiker’s
Guide to the Galaxy.

The reality of AI is nothing like fiction, though. Instead of fully autonomous thinking machines that mimic
human intelligence, we live in an age where computers can be taught to perform limited tasks that involve making
judgments similar to those made by people, but are far from being able to reason like human beings.

Modern AI can perform image recognition, understand the natural language and writing patterns of humans, make
connections between different types of data, identify abnormalities in patterns, strategize, predict, and more.

All artificial intelligence comes down to one core concept: Pattern recognition. At the core of all applications and
varieties of AI is the simple ability to identify patterns and make inferences based on those patterns.

AI isn’t truly intelligent in the way we define intelligence: It can’t think and lacks reasoning skills, it doesn’t show
preferences or have opinions, and it’s not able to do anything outside of the very narrow scope of its training.

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That doesn’t mean AI isn’t useful for businesses and consumers trying to solve real-world problems, it just means
that we’re nowhere close to machines that can actually make independent decisions or arrive at conclusions without
being given the proper data first. Artificial intelligence is still a marvel of technology, but it’s still far from repli-
cating human intelligence or truly intelligent behavior.

What can artificial intelligence do?

AI’s power lies in its ability to become incredibly skilled at doing the things humans train it to. Microsoft and
Alibaba independently built AI machines capable of better reading comprehension than humans, Microsoft has
AI that is better at speech recognition than its human builders, and some researchers are predicting that AI will
outperform humans in most everything in less than 50 years.

That doesn’t mean those AI creations are truly intelligent--only that they’re capable of performing human-like tasks
with greater efficiency than us error-prone organic beings. If you were to try, say, to give a speech recognition AI an
image-recognition task, it would fail completely. All AI systems are built for very specific tasks, and they don’t have
the capability to do anything else.

What are the business applications of artificial intelligence?

Modern AI systems are capable of amazing things, and it’s not hard to imagine what kind of business tasks and
problem solving exercises they could be suited to. Think of any routine task, even incredibly complicated ones, and
there’s a possibility an AI can do it more accurately and quickly than a human--just don’t expect it to do science
fiction-level reasoning.

In the business world, there are plenty of AI applications, but perhaps none is gaining traction as much as business
analytics and its end goal: Prescriptive analytics.

Business analytics is a complicated set of processes that aim to model the present state of a business, predict where it
will go if kept on its current trajectory, and model potential futures with a given set of changes. Prior to the AI age,
analytics work was slow, cumbersome, and limited in scope.

When modeling the past of a business, it’s necessary to account for nearly endless variables, sort through tons of
data, and include all of it in an analysis that builds a complete picture of the up-to-the-present state of an organi-
zation. Think about the business you’re in and all the things that need to be considered, and then imagine a human
trying to calculate all of it--cumbersome, to say the least.

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Predicting the future with an established model of the past can be easy enough, but prescriptive analysis, which
aims to find the best possible outcome by tweaking an organization’s current course, can be downright impossible
without AI help.

There are many artificial intelligence software platforms and AI machines designed to do all that heavy lifting, and
the results are transforming businesses: What was once out of reach for smaller organizations is now feasible, and
businesses of all sizes can make the most of each resource by using artificial intelligence to design the perfect future.

Analytics may be the rising star of business AI, but it’s hardly the only application of artificial intelligence in the
commercial and industrial worlds. Other AI use cases for businesses include the following.

• Recruiting and employment: Human beings can often overlook qualified candidates, or candidates can
fail to make themselves noticed. Artificial intelligence can streamline recruiting by filtering through larger
numbers of candidates more quickly, and by noticing qualified people who may go overlooked.
• Fraud detection: Artificial intelligence is great at picking up on subtle differences and irregular behavior.
If trained to monitor financial and banking traffic, AI systems can pick up on subtle indicators of fraud that
humans may miss.
• Cybersecurity: Just as with financial irregularities, artificial intelligence is great at detecting indicators of
hacking and other cybersecurity issues.
• Data management: Using AI to categorize raw data and find relations between items that were previously
unknown.
• Customer relations: Modern AI-powered chatbots are incredibly good at carrying on conversations thanks
to natural language processing. AI chatbots can be a great first line of customer interaction.
• Healthcare: Not only are some AIs able to detect cancer and other health concerns before doctors, they can
also provide feedback on patient care based on long-term records and trends.
• Predicting market trends: Much like prescriptive analysis in the business analytics world, AI systems can be
trained to predict trends in larger markets, which can lead to businesses getting a jump on emerging trends.
• Reducing energy use: Artificial intelligence can streamline energy use in buildings, and even across cities,
as well as make better predictions for construction planning, oil and gas drilling, and other energy-centric
projects.
• Marketing: AI systems can be trained to increase the value of marketing both toward individuals and larger
markets, helping organizations save money and get better marketing results.

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If a problem involves data, there’s a good possibility that AI can help. This list is hardly complete, and new innova-
tions in AI and machine learning are being made all the time.

What AI platforms are available?

When adopting an AI strategy, it’s important to know what sorts of software are available for business-focused AI.
There are a wide variety of platforms available from the usual cloud-hosting suspects like Google, AWS, Microsoft,
and IBM, and choosing the right one can mean the difference between success and failure.

AWS Machine Learning offers a wide variety of tools that run in the AWS cloud. AI services, pre-built frame-
works, analytics tools, and more are all available, with many designed to take the legwork out of getting started.
AWS offers pre-built algorithms, one-click machine learning training, and training tools for developers getting
started in, or expanding their knowledge of AI development.

Google Cloud offers similar AI solutions to AWS, as well as having several pre-built total AI solutions that organi-
zations can (ideally) plug into their organizations with minimal effort.

Microsoft’s AI platform comes with pre-generated services, ready-to-deploy cloud infrastructure, and a variety
of additional AI tools that can be plugged in to existing models. Its AI Lab also offers a wide range of AI apps that
developers can tinker with and learn from what others have done. Microsoft also offers an AI school with educa-
tional tracks specifically for business applications.

Watson is IBM’s version of cloud-hosted machine learning and business AI, but it goes a bit further with more
AI options. IBM offers on-site servers custom built for AI tasks for businesses that don’t want to rely on cloud
hosting, and it also has IBM AI OpenScale, an AI platform that can be integrated into other cloud hosting services,
which could help to avoid vendor lock-in.

Before choosing an AI platform, it’s important to determine what sorts of skills you have available within your
organization, and what skills you’ll want to focus on when hiring new AI team members. The platforms can require
specialization in different sorts of development and data science skills, so be sure to plan accordingly.

What AI skills will businesses need to invest in?

With business AI taking so many forms, it can be tough to determine what skills an organization needs to
implement it.

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As previously reported by TechRepublic, finding employees with the right set of AI skills is the problem most
commonly cited by organizations looking to get started with artificial intelligence.

Skills needed for an AI project differ based on business needs and the platform being used, though most of the
biggest platforms (like those listed above) support most, if not all, of the most commonly used programming
languages and skills needed for AI.

TechRepublic covered in March 2018 the 10 most in-demand AI skills, which is an excellent summary of the types
of training an organization should look at when building or expanding a business AI team:

1. Machine learning
2. Python
3. R
4. Data science
5. Hadoop
6. Big data
7. Java
8. Data mining
9. Spark
10. SAS
Many business AI platforms offer training courses in the specifics of running their architecture and the
programming languages needed to develop more AI tools. Businesses that are serious about AI should plan to either
hire new employees or give existing ones the time and resources necessary to train in the skills needed to make AI
projects succeed.

How can businesses start using artificial intelligence?

Getting started with business AI isn’t as easy as simply spending money on an AI platform provider and spinning up
some pre-built models and algorithms. There’s a lot that goes into successfully adding AI to an organization.

At the heart of it all is good project planning. Adding artificial intelligence to a business, no matter how it will be
used, is just like any business transformation initiative. Here is an outline of just one way to approach getting started
with business AI.

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1. Determine your AI objective. Figure out how AI can be used in your organization and to what end.
By focusing on a narrower implementation with a specific goal, you can better allocate resources.

2. Identify what needs to happen to get there. Once you know where you want to be, you can figure out
where you are and how to make the journey. This could include starting to sort existing data, gathering new
data, hiring talent, and other pre-project steps.

3. Build a team. With an end goal in sight and a plan to get there, it’s time to assemble the best team to make
it happen. This can include current employees, but don’t be afraid to go outside the organization to find the
most qualified people. Also, be sure to allow existing staff to train so they have the opportunity to contribute
to the project.

4. Choose an AI platform. Some AI platforms may be better suited to particular projects, but by and large they
all offer similar products in order to compete with each other. Let your team give recommendations on which
AI platform to choose--they’re the experts who will be in the trenches.

5. Begin implementation. With a goal, team, and platform, you’re ready to start working in earnest. This won’t
be quick: AI machines need to be trained, testing on subsets of data has to be performed, and lots of tweaks
will need to be made before a business AI is ready to hit the real world.

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