Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to change the way the world operates in life and in business. There are very few technologies that could have this kind of effect on the world soon. Here are some of the areas we think are going to benefit quite a bit from the current rapid progress of AI.
AI Enabling a Healthcare Revolution
AI can be incredibly transformative in the healthcare industry. AI is speeding up several processes in hospitals such as tasks like scanning handwritten data into an online platform, recording audio from doctor-patient conversations, and converting it to text notes, and identifying patients for research studies. This technology is also becoming an essential tool amid a hospital staffing crisis. Many hospitals are turning to AI-powered staffing platforms like DirectShifts that utilize AI to match job seekers with hospitals.
Some hospitals are easing the burden placed on nurses by investing in AI systems that help monitor patients. Startup Ouva’s AI-based platform constantly analyzes patient behavior and potential risks. The platform takes data from optical sensors and alerts nurses when high-risk patients have left their beds. It also monitors things like nurse visits, meal delivery, and arrival and discharge of patients.
AI has the potential to impact the healthcare industry in numerous other ways, as well. Drug development, disease diagnosis, and personalized treatment plans are just a few ways AI might be put to work in the future. Microsoft continues to invest in healthcare AI. The tech giant has partnered with Paige to apply AI technology to improve cancer diagnosis and patient care. Paige was the first company to receive FDA approval for using AI in digital pathology.
Computer Vision is Boosting Efficiency Across Industries
Computer vision is a segment of AI that allows computers to interpret information from images and videos, and act on that information. While the concept of computer vision has been around since the 1950s, the advent of deep learning technology is enabling computer vision to be used in a wide range of applications that simply weren't possible in previous years. Today’s computer vision systems are more accurate than humans and react quicker than humans.
Computer vision technology has far-reaching implications. It can boost defect detection in manufacturing by 90%. It can be used for everything from monitoring pipelines and crops to identifying counterfeit money and areas of concern in cancer patients. A computer vision system can track every step of the production process. If a step is missed or something is done out of order, an alarm is set off. In addition, the system knows how long a production cycle should take and can detect faults if the cycle runs too fast. Finally, when a faulty product is detected, workers can look up the item by its serial number to watch exactly what happened during the manufacturing process. Startups such as Instrumental offer a computer vision system that provides issue discovery and quality monitoring for electronics manufacturers. The system also performs end-to-end failure analysis.
Computer vision is also being deployed in response to natural disasters and climate change issues. California startup Rain is using computer vision to fight wildfires. Their product is an unmanned autonomous helicopter that uses AI and computer vision to deliver water to a wildfire before it grows out of control. The company’s idea is to put these helicopters in high-risk areas that aren’t staffed by humans 24/7. If a wildfire broke out, the helicopter could be immediately deployed by a pilot at a remote location.
Natural Language Processing Will Drives New Use Cases in Business World
The business world is wrapped in text. Analyzing, formatting, translating, and using texts is essential to all types of business around the world. Few things in the AI industry have more promising business use cases than natural language processing (NLP). NLP is a way for computers to speak human language. In the past, computers were only able to understand human language if it was first translated into code. But by using NLP, machines can gain intelligence from text as it sits in its natural state.
With an NLP tool, organizations can process data up to 10x faster and analyze unstructured data via human language. It is estimated that the amount of data in the world could hit 612 Zettabytes by 2030. Much of this is human-readable text, so businesses can use NLP to determine the sentiment of text, classify text, extract meaning and keywords from text, and analyze text. This provides an efficient way to analyze and gain insights from enormous amounts of data - something that just isn’t possible without the use of NLP. Businesses from dozens of sectors like retail, marketing, and finance are already using some form of NLP. In the legal and commercial space, dozens of companies have begun using NLP to analyze dense legal documents, as well as generate new ones. Startups such as BlackBoiler offer AI technology that uses NLP to analyze contracts and suggest changes in places where clauses might be disputed.
AI Can Enable Teachers and Students with Smart Educational Tools
In educational settings, AI has the potential to dramatically change both the way educators teach and the way students learn. Some teachers are currently utilizing AI in their teaching with sites like Character.ai and Prof Jim. Character.ai is a chatbot that gives people the opportunity to chat with AI-generated characters. For example, students can chat with Winston Churchill, Socrates, or Napoleon. They can also ask questions to an English teacher bot or a history teacher bot, for example. Prof Jim is an AI program that scans a textbook or Wikipedia page and automatically puts that information into an immersive online lesson featuring cinema-quality animations. Prof Jim is working with textbook publishers as well as teachers to turn text-based lessons into videos.
AI tools that act as tutors are also being developed and launched for students as young as kindergartners. These tools are designed to give personalized, direct instruction to students without the need for a human teacher. They’re able to give live feedback and alter the course of instruction based on the student’s performance.
Numerade offers an AI tutor named Ace. Ace creates personalized study plans for students. The AI algorithm works by assessing students’ learning styles, strengths, and weaknesses. Ace then shows students videos that fit that style and provides assessments meant to develop students’ weakest areas. The more students watch, the more personalized their content becomes.
New AI Search Engines
One of the most popular and powerful applications of natural language processing is AI search. AI search tools that use large language models (LLMs) and Generative AI have the potential to change how people find information online. ChatGPT is a generative AI platform that went viral at the end of 2022. Users can enter a question into the tool, and it will provide an answer, but it can also function as a chatbot. That means it can have very human-like conversations and complete commands to generate content. For example, a professor at Wharton, University of Pennsylvania administered his MBA final exam to ChatGPT. The tool scored a B. In another example, a ChatGPT extension can be used in Google Sheets to populate networking emails to send to CEOs on LinkedIn. Salesforce is in the process of monetizing a tool using the ChatGPT model. Einstein GPT will automatically generate marketing emails to send to sales leads. These platforms go way beyond simple queries like finding the capital of a country or the current temperature. Users can query broad questions like how to plan a three-course meal or which car to buy.
The underlying LLMs behind an interface like ChatGPT work by first analyzing large amounts of information and “learning” it. From this, the model recognizes patterns and can predict words and phrases that are meant to go together. So, when a person types in a search query in natural language, the AI search platform can predict a sequence of human language that will answer the question. Instead of producing a list of relevant websites, the tool gives written answers that were pulled from a combination of different resources.
Big Tech players have already entered the race to become the go-to generative AI search platform. Microsoft debuted their AI-powered version of Bing in early February 2023. Although it’s run by ChatGPT technology, Microsoft claims it’s even faster and more accurate because it’s specifically built for search. The platform allows users to ask follow-up questions to a search and it can also generate new content. Bard, Google’s version of AI search, was also announced in early February 2023, but analysts say it’s lagging Microsoft’s version.
Although much of the clamor surrounding AI search has been centered on ChatGPT, Bing, and Google, a stand-alone company, Perplexity AI, is offering a tool that could potentially best them all. Perplexity’s AI search chatbot can provide information in real time and it provides citations for the information. For comparison, ChatGPT has only been trained on information leading up to 2021. Perplexity’s AI tool can produce results related to current events. The tool also lists its sources.
The above are some of the use cases that could generate immense value in their respective ecosystems. We believe that startups that are targeting such use cases are well poised to scale faster than their competitors as they provide immediate RoI on their products.
/Service Ventures Team
Comments