What I Learned in creating a program about AI & Business at Hyper Island (part 1/3)
Author: Dano Marr
This longread is published as a three-part series.
Part One: Why would a painter teach AI?
I’m a painter. Ever since I was a kid, I liked to draw. Really, I was an imaginative explorer, and I loved sci-fi. Over the past one and a half years, I have worked together with industry experts to develop and personally manage the AI Business Consultant program at Hyper Island.
So what is a painter doing organizing an AI program? I wondered the same thing. As an artist, I am no expert in the field but I love creating things, and I thought, “what a great challenge!” My job is to be a beginner, a learner. And what I do is I find people who work with AI and invite them to share with our students what they’re doing and discovering in the field. After one and a half years, it feels like I’ve only scratched the surface.
The AI business consultant program at Hyper Island is not about developing AI the way that engineers do (that involves highly advanced mathematics), but exploring the practical applications of these technologies and how to communicate with all the people involved in and affected by the creation of new products and services built with AI as a central element.
So what have I learned in the last one and a half years as the program manager for the AI business consultant program at Hyper Island? There’s three areas that I want to focus on: people, processes, and technology.
Technology I’ll start with first, because any time AI enters the picture, that is what tends to attract the most attention. So we’ll start there. I’ll then move on to processes and talk about how we work, and I’ll wrap up and finish with talking about people, which I think is really the most important part. In reality though, if you think of a triangle, each of these three things sits in a corner of equal value, because all of them are at play…whenever we have business transformation, social movements, work situations, personal development, all of these three things are influencing us.
So let’s dive in.
Technology.
There’s no question that AI is changing the technology landscape. It is being used more and more to automate tasks that have traditionally been done by humans. In some cases, this is causing anxiety with people, working a lot more and worrying about losing their jobs to robots. But in most cases, it’s simply making work faster, easier and more efficient.
Take for example the way AI is being used by banks to detect fraud. Traditionally, this has been done by human employees who manually review bank statements and credit card receipts, looking for signs of fraudulent activity. But with the help of AI, this process can now be done in an automated way. AI can quickly scan through large amounts of data to identify patterns that humans would not be able to see. This not only speeds up the process of detecting fraud, but it also reduces the likelihood of human error.
AI is also being used by businesses to improve their customer service. For example, Amazon’s Echo and Google Home are voice activated assistants that can help customers with tasks such as finding information about a product or making a purchase. These assistants use AI to understand and respond to customer questions in natural language.
This not only provides a better customer experience, but it also frees up human employees to handle more complex tasks. Handle more complex tasks.
Processes.
In addition to changing the technology landscape. AI is also changing the business landscape. It’s enabling businesses to become more efficient and agile and to respond to changes in the market more quickly.
For example, in the United States, Walmart is being used, for example, in the United States, Walmart is using AI to track customer behavior by tracking the buying habits of customers. Walmart is able to better understand what products they’re interested in and what products they are likely to purchase in the future. This allows companies like Walmart to make changes in their inventory and product offerings more quickly and efficiently.
Netflix is also using AI to improve customer experience by tracking the viewing habits of customers. Netflix is able to recommend similar or related movies and TV shows to them. This not only provides a better customer experience, but it also helps Netflix to understand better what kind of content its customers are interested in.
People.
But while AI is changing the technology and business landscapes, it’s also changing the social landscape. It is enabling businesses to connect with customers and new and innovative ways, and it is helping to improve communication and collaboration within businesses.
For example, Facebook is using AI to improve the quality of its translations. By using AI to translate posts and comments from one language to another, Facebook is able to connect people from all over the world who speak different languages. This not only helps break down communication barriers, but it also helps to build relationships between people from different cultures.
Okay.
Now, everything that I have shared since I said, “Let’s dive in” was written by an AI. Don’t be alarmed. This is something that is probably more common than you think, but not as weird.
What does this mean for us taking in this information? How does it change the landscape? How does it affect creativity, productivity, what we can trust, and what is uniquely human?
I would like to talk about AI and what it can do, and what it can’t do. I also would like to talk about processes and how it’s affecting us and how we work together: How do we relate? And I would like to talk about people, like I’d said. I want to talk about how we are as people, and how we learn, and how we embrace change. That’s really what I want to focus on in this article. And in so doing, I am going to involve a bit of AI. I am going to share some of the things that I have been exploring, and I think could be fun to explore for you.
This is what we will cover in the next part.
Part 2 will be released next Friday the 1st of April
