“THE ROBOTS ARE COMING,” the headlines read. That is not true. They are already here. Those headlines serve as part alarm bells and part knocks of opportunity. It just really depends on who you talk to and how you look at it. Regardless of your perspective, artificial intelligence is impacting every business sector, so it is best to be prepared for all the changes they will bring.

As self-driving cars and automated factories take up the lion’s share of the news coverage about artificial intelligence (AI), its impact is running wider and deeper than headlines suggest. If a business is using email for its marketing, chances are AI is involved. If a patient is going through medical testing, AI is playing a role and when people take Netflix’s movie suggestions, AI is doing the recommending.

Just what is artificial intelligence, how fast is it advancing and how companies should prepare and adapt are all questions posed to two artificial intelli-gence experts at Rowan University.

“Artificial intelligence is the broader concept of machines being able to carry out tasks in a way con-sidered human-like or ‘smart,’” said Nidhal Bouaynaya, Ph.D. and associate dean for research and graduate studies at Rowan University.

A concept that has been around for decades, the technology made its first true impact in 1997 when IBM’s “Deep Blue” computer defeated the Russian chess champion Garry Kasparov. When the company’s “Watson” beat a Jeopardy champion in 2011, AI began capturing the imagination of the general public.

The pace and applications of AI have picked up considerably ever since, said Mira Lalovic-Hand Ph.D and senior vice president for information and

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ARTIFICIALINTELLIGENCETHE FUTURE IS NOW

technology at Rowan University. “Increases in computing capacity, network

speeds, storage and other related technolo-gies all contribute to our ability to process the huge datasets necessary to derive ‘intel-ligence,’ and to use those tools to influence outcomes in our increasingly technology driven society,’ she said.

Going Beyond Factory RobotsBoth Lalovic-Hand and Bouaynaya said

the applications for artificial intelligence reach far and wide.

For manufacturing products, smart robots are building and moving products through to market. For services, AI’s use of smart data to recognize patterns and draw conclusions speed these processes along, cutting valu-able time in decision-making.

“Artificial Intelligence systems are designed to rapidly consume, process and correlate data from multiple sources to pro-duce decisions or actions based on the pro-vided information. Any industry which can collect, process, and recognize patterns in data has the potential to benefit from Artifi-cial Intelligence,” said Lolovic-Hand, whose expertise includes working to secure and

protect the university’s systems and records.

Since beating contestants on Jeopardy, Watson now gathers infor-mation from a large data set in med-ical treatment guidelines, clinical studies, journal articles and patient information to assist doctors and nurses in their diagnosis and treat-ment of patients.

“IBM Watson's former business chief, Manoj Saxena, says that 90 percent of nurses in the field who use Watson now follow its guidance,” Lalovic-Hand said.

The technology is being used to manage security threats and resolve user-technology problems world-wide, Bouaynaya added.

“AI technology also holds tre-mendous promise for better man-

aging demand across electricity grids, improving energy efficiency,

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boosting agricultural productivity, and projecting the spread of infectious dis-eases, among other applications,” she said.

Investments, Savings and Workforce

Because AI has the power to cut pro-duction time and improve efficiencies, both experts agree that companies that use artificial intelligence strategically, can boost their profits.

Large companies like Google and Amazon are pouring billions of dollars into AI technology to improve their com-petitive edge in the market. Other com-panies are using it to identify and cut costs.

“Netflix estimated that it avoided $1 billion in an annual loss by improving its search results using machine learning,” Bouaynaya said.

Tech companies are also making huge investments in workforce acquisition.

“The pool of experts in the field is small. The shortage of talent and cost of acquiring it are underlined by a recent

report that companies are seeking to fill 10,000 AI-related jobs and have bud-geted more than $650 million for sala-ries,” Bouaynaya said.

The current costs of research and development in AI will continue to be driven and borne by large busi-nesses, government funded initiatives and innovative tech startups. Owners of small and medium-sized businesses would be wise to develop their opera-tions workforce that are able to use and work alongside this growing technology, Lalovic-Hand said.

“Small and medium sized businesses will be best served by keeping their tech-nology ecosystem flexible, minimizing their technology debt, and ensuring that their workforce and organizational cul-ture are in position to take advantage of opportunities as they arise,” she said.

Fight the FearWith reports that AI technology could

wipe out whole categories of jobs, many people speculate that work as we know it

will not exist in the not-to-distant future. An academic paper published last

year by Massachusetts Institute of Tech-nology’s (MIT’s) Sloan School of Manage-ment argued that while whole category of jobs could be disrupted by AI, it does not mean jobs will disappear.

"Our findings suggest that a shift is needed in the debate about the effects of AI: away from the common focus on full automation of entire jobs and per-vasive occupational replacement toward the redesign of jobs and reengineering of business practices," the authors stated last year.

“Society will transform yet again as it did with the adoption of internet or mobile technology. As with other rev-olutionary technologies, there will be unforeseen effects. However, I am opti-mistic that society as a whole will pre-serve the best advancements and make major strides towards our overall prog-ress and even space explorations,” Lalovic-Hand said.

“Netflix estimated that

it avoided $1 billion in

an annual loss by improving

its search results using

machine learning.”

Nidhal Bouaynaya, Ph.D. and associate

dean for research and graduate studies

at Rowan University

24 GLOUCESTER COUNTY CHAMBER THE VOICE – Spring/Summer 2019