
What is AI? A Guide for SMEs
It’s true, the robots are coming. Machine intelligence will soon be infinitely more powerful than all human intelligence combined, and artificial intelligence will render us unemployed. As a species, we will merge with machines, and in the process, we will lose our ability to independently function, make decisions, interact with others and go about our day.
Ray Kurzweil, Google’s guru of AI and futurism, believes that “medical robots will go inside our brain and connect our neo-cortex to the smart cloud” by the year 2029. What he is describing there is chips inside our brains that will allow us to simply think about a question and get an answer, rather than to ask ‘Hey Google’, or ‘Hey Siri’.
If that all sounds dystopian to you, that’s understandable. Fear is a common reaction when discussing the implications of AI and the impact it will have on our lives. However, optimists argue that AI may well actually improve our existence, including how we work.
For many, AI remains a mystery. The industry itself is in its infancy, and some questions remain about this groundswell of change that is often referred to as the ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution.’ One thing is certain, however, and that’s the inevitability of AI’s influence in the business sphere.
Tech companies are booming across the globe, and they’re working fast on developing AI solutions applicable to industry. These companies aren’t just the tech giants like Google and Amazon. Start-ups are achieving rapid success, partly because scaling up companies in an AI enabled and cloud environment is much easier, simpler and less reliant on large head counts.
AI driven efficiencies could soon be seen across a wide range of fields including insurance, banking, recruitment, marketing, travel, security, accounting, customer support and more. Many companies are already using intelligent automation to shed themselves of basic administrative and laborious tasks.
As AI and its applications evolve, it’s important for businesses to have a top level understanding of the industry and its possible implications for the future. This article takes a look at the fundamentals of AI, how it’s changing our lives and the implications for SMEs.
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About Flight Centre Travel Group
The Flight Centre Travel Group is one of the world’s largest travel retailers and corporate travel managers. The company, which is headquartered in Brisbane, Australia, has company-owned leisure and corporate travel business in dozens of countries, spanning Australia, New Zealand, the Americas, Europe, the United Kingdom, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Asia. ASX listed Flight Centre Travel Group (FLT) also operates the global FCM corporate travel management network, which extends to more than 100 countries through company-owned businesses and independent licensees, along with Corporate Traveller, the flagship business specific to the small-to-medium-sized enterprise sector. For more information, visit fctgl.com.