The Rise in Artificial Intelligence

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From Robocop to The Matrix, there is usually a depiction of dystopia surrounding the idea of Artificial intelligence (AI). Over the years, the sentience on screen has presented technological advances and has bridged the gap between Science Fiction and Science Fact.

However, AI is here and is here to stay.

The depiction of Artificial intelligence presented in film and cinema is a somewhat dystopian perception. However, this isn’t true for reality. Artificial Intelligence is becoming, and will only become, more beneficial to business processes and success – challenging the perception seen on screen.

Not only this, but the development of AI has gained notoriety within recent years and has become a part of the modern cultural zeitgeist for its numerous and expansive capabilities, both beneficial to everyday life and business.

What is Artificial Intelligence?

But what is Artificial Intelligence? Artificial Intelligence, also known as AI, is a term which has undergone many iterations and evolutions in meaning. AI leverages computers and machines to mimic the problem-solving and decision-making capabilities of the human mind.

While it can be assumed that there are several definitions of AI which have surfaced over the last few decades, John McCarthy, one of the ‘founding fathers’ of Artificial intelligence, defines AI as:

“the science and engineering of making intelligent machines, especially intelligent computer programmes. It is related to the similar task of using computers to understand human intelligence, but AI does not have to confine itself to methods that are biologically observable.”

Simply put, Artificial Intelligence is systems that act like humans.

How AI is Bettering the Development of The World.

As a result of the developments of Artificial Intelligence, it is arguably changing the world for the better.

Changing the workforce, AI is creating new jobs. The bleak view and argument of AI being a job killer is only one side of the coin. Yes, it is making menial, repetitive jobs obsolete due to Machine Learning and the automation of these jobs.

However, with the rise in AI, there are more emerging, engaging and less repetitive jobs. These jobs allow workers to have the opportunity to focus on the parts of the job that may be more satisfying for them to participate in whilst using more depth of knowledge to complete a complex task or job.

AI is allowing the world to become a smaller, more accessible place. No, not physically: but AI has the capabilities to bridge language divides. Whether you want to learn new languages or translate speech and text in real-time, AI-powered language tools, like Duolingo or Google Translate, are bridging the sociological and cultural gap in our worldwide community. From workplaces, classrooms, and whilst travelling, these real-time digital translations offer a means of understanding which may not have been possible without AI.

As AI becomes increasingly commonplace in the zeitgeist, it will only grow easier for your company to take advantage of its benefits. customers are quickly becoming accustomed to interacting with automated systems, so the ability to provide customers with simple, easy-to-use solutions may set you apart from your competitors.

AI has already revolutionised how many businesses operate and will continue to enhance Customer Service experiences and key business metrics like revenue and ROI in more ways than we can imagine.

Simulating the functions of human intelligence processed by machines, AI can make cars self-driving and identify risks more accurately in various industries. As well as this, AI can understand the data of a journey: notifying users about traffic and ETAs and giving the best route to users’ desired location – travel will only develop into an easier and more accessible experience.

AI Redefining the Traditional Boundaries of Art.

In addition to all of the points discussed above, Artificial Intelligence is redefining the traditional boundaries of art.

Being such a broad term, the definition of art is ver difficult to define. Taking the definition of art, art is:

the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power.

– Oxford Dictionary

From this definition, it can be argued that there is an explicit reference to the human when it comes to the creation of art. Therefore, sparking the debate of whether AI-generated art is true art due to the lack of the human during the creation.

The Modern Art movement was renowned for challenging this rational ideology and pushing the boundaries of what is considered art. Anything can be art is it is perceived as art. For example, an orange duct-taped to a wall can be considered modern art. The performative act of easing said orange could be considered performance, and thus performance art.

Keeping this in mind, it can be argued that AI-generated art can be seen as a subsection or new genre of art which has been around for years. Yet, the rise in discussions about Artificial Intelligence in the modern zeitgeist has only triggered the heightened popularity of this debate.

Computer Vision, a scientific field that deals with how computers gain high-lebel understanding from digital images or videos, as seen below, was the most popular brand of Machine Learning and AI art before the deep learning art explosion in the later 2010s and early 2020s.

AI Art systems have never stopped improving how they see and perceive the world. AI-generated art has advanced significantly throughout the last decade with the help of generative models and networks. These networks create images using datasets they’ve been trained on and develop their learning through Machine Learning (ML).

Similarly to AI technologies within the business world, AI-generated art is at our disposal now. With countless AI Art Generators available and free to use – you can simply input text prompts and the Artificial Intelligence develops a visual outcome based on the datasets it is continuously learning from – one of which was used to produce the image featured on this blog post!

AI Art Generators, like VQGAN+CLIP or DALL.E, are likely to continue to develop and evolve into highly sophisticated art engines. It is clear that AI is continuously growing, and who’s to say that the development of this will continuously impact the world of art and transform the perceived definition of what we believe art to be?

How AI is Changing Business.

Businesses of all sizes increasingly realise the importance of implementing Artificial Intelligence to achieve short-term and long-term goals.

For the greatest benefits, businesses should look at putting the full range of smart technologies – including ML, Natural Language Processing (NLP) and more – into their processes and products.

However, businesses that are new to AI can reap major rewards. AI technologies have the power to change the infrastructure drastically by:

• Increasing work efficiency and customer satisfaction.
• Reducing overall business costs.
• Allowing for more rapid expansion and better consumer insights.
• Reducing the risk of security attacks.

Within the business realm, the introduction of Ai also allows companies to gain a competitive advantage over their competitors in the market. With the increasing rate of technological innovations and advances in line with the exponential growth of varying AI technologies, the market dynamics will adjust accordingly.

The businesses which adopt and embrace these technological innovations will enable more flexible and modern strategies, consequently allowing for a significant increase in their chances of financial and overall organisational success.

Not only this, but as consumers increase their engagement within the digital marketplace, the wealth of behavioural data can produce meaningful insights into your target market or customers; location, job role, interest, and much more. With the implementation of AI technologies, this data and information will be used to inform your Sales and Marketing department’s campaigns, consumer experience and market insights. As a result, it creates more fiscal success.

Overall, using Artificial Intelligence within your organisation could yield fantastic benefits for those open to exploring the utility and emerging technologies as business tools.

The effect that these technologies produce is vast and expanding, meaning that as they develop, they will be able to benefit organisations in new and exciting ways.

However, it needs to be mentioned that although AI has made great technological advances, AI technologies don’t always perform best on their own., They are great at giving or even replacing lower-level, repetitive tasks; organisations often achieve greater success and best performance when humans and AI work together. Rather than replacing human capabilities, AI augments and improves upon human capabilities.

In short, when using Artificial Intelligence in your organisation, it can:

• Boost revenue
• Enhance customer experience
• Create effective content and insights for Sales and Marketing Strategies
• Create insightful analysis
• Create a competitive advantage
• Use Sales Forecasting to grow your business
• Optimize your pricing
• Improve cyber security
• Save time
• Reduce overall costs

Artificial Intelligence isn’t going anywhere. The technological growth of AI and the cultural awareness of AI within the modern zeitgeist isn’t stopping anytime soon.

From bettering your organisation’s operations, redefining the traditional boundaries of art, and self-driving cars, the capabilities of Artificial Intelligence are wide and expansive; they are only going to develop further and expand on human capabilities. Who’s to say that a person didn’t even write this blog post? Are robots officially taking over?

A business that doesn’t accept the capabilities of Artificial intelligence and implement it within their organisation will quickly struggle in the competitive landscape of business.

Want to learn more about how we can help you implement Artificial Intelligence into your organisation? Fill out the form below, and let’s discuss how we can help you make the transformation from Science Fiction to (Data) Science Fact.

Accelerate Business Success Automatically:

A Data Automation Overview

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Data automation is fast replacing conventional methods for building and maintaining various centralised data repositories, which organisations use to deliver data-driven value and insights.

Businesses can generate vast amounts of data taking on many forms. Structured and unstructured data from CRMs, HR systems, social media and websites – these varying forms and sources of data need to be stored somewhere – this is where Data Automation can help you!

Start accelerating business success automatically with Data Automation.

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What is Data Automation?

Traditionally, data pipelines to move or transform data have been manually scripted by developers. not having a development standard, these processes allowed for developers to use their own coding style to apply different methodologies, either to an individual pipeline or a set of pipelines. This made amending code or supporting issues difficult to read through, interpret or alter. This problem was then scaled significantly by the number of developers in a team.

In addition, this can lead to poor process performance where the technology is not used to its fullest extent – or cannot process everything demanded.

Yet, Data Automation eliminates these problems – making them a distant memory after the implementation of Data Automation. Data Automation is collecting, processing and presenting data using automated tools instead of performing these tasks manually. Manually updating data presents a risk of being delayed and creates an additional workload for your team to complete alongside their day-to-day responsibilities.

Replacing manually coded scripts with a low-code or no-code tool helps your team focus on processing and modelling the data without spending hours writing code. With minimal human intervention, Data Automation will collect, transform, store and analyse data using well-designed methods, software and, where applicable, Artificial Intelligence. Eliminating the reliance on manual labour with bots that will do the job for you.

In addition, code standards can be applied to the data processing scripts, creating a consistent and easy-to-support data platform. Gone are the days of flawed, manually coded scripts.

Data Automation tools automate three key elements of Data Automation. This is known as ETL or ELT, depending on what tool you are using:

Extract – Data is exported from source systems like social media, emails, SQL Servers, etc. Into a staging area. This data could consist of various types and be pulled from most structured or unstructured sources.

Transform – Changing the data to fit the purpose. For example, transforming the data into a Star Schema ready for further analysis by Visualisation or Business Intelligence tools.

Load – The data is moved from the staging area into storage. For example, a Data Warehouse or a Data Lake.

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What Tools are Available for Data Automation?

With a plethora of Data Automation tools in the market, there is a significant amount to choose from; some are more efficient than others. Some do a good job, and some do an excellent job.

At Engaging Data, to be relevant to the needs of our customers, we only partner with specifically selected Data and Information partners. This approach helps our clients bring true value in realising and delivering their data-led business change journey. Our Partners include:

Microsoft – Take care of what’s important. Automate the rest. Do more with less by streamlining repetitive tasks and business processes – increasing efficiency and reducing cost.

WhereScape – Accelerate with Data Automation. Rapidly deliver a meaningful and future-proofed data platform.

Matillion – Unlock new levels of productivity and get data business-ready faster.

Snowflake – Join the cloud. Execute your most critical workloads in a fully managed platform that capitalises on the near-infinite resources of the cloud.

VaultSpeed – Delivering unparalleled automation of upfront data warehouse design and development. Fully compliant with Data Vault 2.0.

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Why You Need Data Automation.

As previously mentioned, Data Automation helps improve productivity around the use of data within your organisation. Some other benefits influence improved Data Quality, simpler Data Cleaning and optimized Data Transformation.

Improved Data Quality –

As a result of datasets being standardized in accordance with formats and schemas, you can use Data Automation not detect and fix any records that don’t adhere to the format. Data Automation helps you improve data integrity and quickly detect errors.

Simpler Data Cleaning –

Data Cleaning transforms raw data, usually unformatted and unstandardised, into a significantly more suitable format for data analysis. Generally, the steps taken in Data Cleaning are repeatable, thus frameworks and standards for future datasets.

Automating these steps, using scripts and schedules to make new data match existing schemas and running steps on a recurring basis whenever new data is needed or imported.

Optimized Data Transformation –

The process of changing datasets from one format to another, Data transformation involves checking the datasets to ensure its in the correct format in the destination repository. Ensure that the data quality is good and checking the dataset follows the set standards for your organisation’s requirements or the data’s destination.

By automating Data transformation, it will help accelerate processes as you will need to manipulate, transform or analyse the data, and it is already in a standardized format.

Not only does Data Automation grant the large benefits discussed above, but Data Automation also allows for these general business benefits:

Enables Better Decision-Making – Businesses can react rapidly to the data’s narrative. Allowing for decisions to be made quickly with more data-led insights

Reduced Risk of Human Error – Manual data entry is prone to human errors that can cause Data Quality issues and affect reporting accuracy.

Improved Operation Efficiency – By setting up the rules and processes with software, you can easily audit and redefine these processes. You can quickly identify any broken or unnecessary workflows.

More Efficient Workforce – Teams no longer need to spend their precious time and advanced skillsets on mundane admin. Instead, they can add value elsewhere as their skill sets are appropriately optimized.

Reduces Operational Costs – You can get substantially more done with the same resources: minimal investment whilst maximising return.

Scalability – Automation software is ready to scale with your business, so you can utilise its benefits regardless of where your business is now and how much it grows in the future.

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How Engaging Data can help You with Data Automation.

At Engaging Data, we understand that everyone needs data built efficiently to gain value quickly.

Using innovative Data Automation tools, we help you seamlessly integrate your data into accessible and secure platforms. Building data for a purpose, we only process relevant information to achieve your goals.

Do more with less effort.

Let us help you enable your teams to do more, eliminate human error and produce a higher standard of work with minimum effort.

Automate your data now.

Fill out the form below, and work with the experts behind Data Automation.