Artificial Intelligence and the Four Stages of Disruption

If you’re new to the world of business or an old player who’s stuck in their ways, you might be feeling nervous with all the talk of AI going around. Well, the bad news is that you should be nervous. Experts predict that AI is the new, disruptive force in the market.

When you really look into AI and all it does and can do, it’s not hard to see why it’s the next big thing in the world of business. People have been talking about AI technology changing their lives for better or for worse for a few decades now. But it’s only now that AI technology has been developed enough for businesses and organizations to employ machine learning and deep learning mechanisms to better their business operations.

So, if AI really is the next big thing, wouldn’t it be a good idea to start thinking about taking advantage of it, too? You don’t want to become one of those businesses that got left in the dust because it couldn’t keep up with new trends and competing businesses that changed the game. If you’re still not convinced and want to know more, keep reading to see how AI can disrupt your business model.

What Is Disruption?

Before reading all about AI’s disruptive power, you need to know exactly what disruption is. In the world of technology, disruption is the introduction of new technology or the popularization of existing technology that has the potential to render incumbent technology obsolete over a span of time.

So, in shorter words, AI has the potential to shut down any businesses in the future that don’t integrate it into their processes. It could happen in a year, five years, or even a decade. One thing’s for sure though, AI technology has been growing faster than it was ever expected to, so you should expect the revolution to happen sooner rather than later.

Why Is My Business in Danger?

Organizations and industries all over the world are already employing AI to make their business processes shorter, more efficient, and more cost-effective.

How Do Businesses Use AI?

Businesses are using AI to make their marketing and customer service departments more efficient, to automate internal processes and increase the efficiency of all their employees, to predict future trends in the market and stay ahead of the game, and much more.

Innovations in Healthcare

The examples above are just the general ways AI can benefit almost any business. However, keep in mind that if we talk about specific industries like the healthcare industry, for instance, it goes much deeper than that. Machine learning and deep learning algorithms are being used in Healthcare to automate diagnostic processes, improve DNA analysis, drug formulation, and the accuracy of treatment, and even to identify high-risk patient groups.

Steps of Disruption

AI won’t render your current business model obsolete in just one fell swoop; rather, it’s a slow and gradual process that is already well underway.

Let’s talk about how AI managed to change the way people do business in the last five years and how AI will continue to do so until any other way to do business is old news.

1.    Poised for Disruption

AI has been around for over six decades, but it wasn’t until the last decade arrived that real progress was made in the field. Everyone knew what great potential AI had, but people were reluctant to get on board because of various misgivings.

However, time went on, and those misgivings were addressed by the experts. Now, people recognize the usefulness of AI.

• It is low cost.
• It increases the efficiency of business processes, employees, marketing, and many other things.
• It predicts future trends, enabling companies and organizations to stay one step ahead of the game.

Once AI was proven to be not only ethical but cheap and actionable, it was positioned perfectly to bring about a digital transformation in the world of business.

After this, it was only a matter of time that people started using it in their own businesses as a way to reduce costs and increase revenue.

2.    Popularization

This is what’s happening right now. AI is becoming more and more popular, and businesses are growing curious about it. They’ve all heard of a new piece of technology that can help them grow, work better, reduce costs, and increase profits. Who doesn’t want that for their business?

Why Do People Like AI?

Why did so many people all over the world suddenly start using AI? Why did it become so popular? Well, there are several reasons that go beyond it being cheap and cost-effective. AI does the dirty work for you, and it makes the lives of your employees easier.

• Better Marketing: AI has revolutionized how companies market their products. With the help of certain software, you can now use the social media history of prospective clients and AI to determine who to market to. In this way, you’re putting your products and services in front of exactly the kind of people who want them or are looking for them. Not only did you save money on marketing to customers who have no interest in your product, but you also increased the chances of people buying from your ads.
• Better Customer Service: AI chatbots are being employed in customer service more and more these days. With the help of these bots, customers are provided with top-notch help around the clock. Intuitive software is able to judge and understand the context of the customer’s problem and provide real, actionable solutions. In call centers, AI software can automate most of the incoming queries, leaving the actual call center representatives to answer only the questions that haven’t been asked before.
• Increase Employee Efficiency: With the help of AI, many industries are able to automate most in-house processes. They left AI to do repetitive, mundane tasks and were even able to train Deep Learning algorithms to learn from past instances and take action on their own. This takes a lot of the daily workload off your employees’ shoulders, leaving them to take care of more important tasks.

These are just some of the ways AI can make almost every business work more smoothly, but if we look closely at specific industries and companies, the possibilities are endless. Netflix, Uber, and Tesla are some of the biggest examples of a successful marriage between AI and business.

Netflix

Netflix employs AI to give its users tailor-made recommendations that keep them hooked on their app, it even used AI to decide what thumbnails to display for what user and to predict future trends for demand so it can allocate internal resources accordingly instead of spreading them all thin over their global customer base.

Uber

In Uber’s case, AI helps the app perform better and provides quick solutions for anyone with a problem. It allows users and drivers to interact better and facilitates their exchanges by providing message templates.

Tesla

We already talked about the wonders AI can do for the healthcare industry, but even Tesla takes advantage of the latest AI technology in its electric cars. These cars are easily upgradeable, intelligent, and incredibly user-friendly. Features like self-parking, an intelligent user interface, and much more make Tesla a leader in the field.

3.    The New Normal

As more and more companies and organizations decide to adopt AI, it will eventually become standard practice for businesses like yours to incorporate it into their business model.

In the highly competitive market that we have today, everyone is scrambling to innovate and take advantage of every opportunity that helps better their businesses. The idea of a better performing business is an attractive one, and the only reason it isn’t the norm already is because of certain challenges that are slowing this progress down.

Not Every Business Is Ready

Not every business is ready to take on the task of integrating AI into its model. For many, the initial cost is not worth the rewards promised.

To effectively bring about the digital transformation in your workplace, you need to train your employees, hire a new IT team or invest in the existing one’s training and education, get all the necessary data together to train your new AI, and much more.

Even then, successful integration is a learning curve, and it takes a while for companies to figure out what works and what doesn’t. Many people feel that their businesses are doing just fine. They are for now, but what about the future?

Ethical Objections

Some people are intimidated by the idea of a machine thinking and learning as humans do and aren’t keen on the idea that these machines replace actual human beings doing these tasks.

It’s a sad thing to see because of how AI has the potential to create more jobs than it replaced. The stigma against AI is, however, diminishing with time because young entrepreneurs don’t buy into the “robots will take over the world” story.

Is There Still Hope?

Even after all these hurdles placed in the way of AI’s dominion over the business world, AI is making huge progress. For many, the long-term rewards are well worth the short-term challenges, and that’s the reason AI has been able to cause such disruption in the first place.

4.    Old Business Models Collapse

In the last and final step of this disruptive journey, AI is going to take over the business world. We’ve seen new technology completely dominate older technology time and time again throughout history—be it the advent of digital photography putting companies like Kodak out of business because they fell behind or companies like Blackberry losing their market share because they couldn’t keep up.

As more and more businesses opt for AI technology and integrate it into their business models, older, clunkier business models will prove to be insufficient to keep up with the competition.

Customers won’t want to invest money in an app with slow customer service. Companies that don’t use AI marketing will lose their market share to those who do because of their inefficient marketing strategies. And industries with fully manual internal procedures will fall behind those that are beginning to lean on automation to carry out their day-to-day activities.

Don’t Worry. There’s Still Hope!

By now, you’re probably wondering if it’s too late for you to save your business from impending doom. The good news is that you don’t need to worry. There’s still more than enough time to invest in AI technology for your business and start taking it seriously.

Start planning today by analyzing all parts of your business model that need work, talking to experts in your department to judge whether performance can be improved with technology, and hiring an expert to decide how you want to proceed.

Even if companies that don’t use AI don’t suffer too greatly in the next few years, AI technology is still an investment that gives you great results.