Outlook on AI in 2019

           Artificial intelligence or AI has been increasingly adopted in multiple industries in recent years.
In today’s highly competitive business environment, many organizations have begun implementing AI in the development of products and services to fulfill customers’ needs. The rapid pace of AI adoption suggests that AI is entering its golden age as it continues to transform the industrial sector and improve our lifestyles through machine and deep learning. Let’s take a look at how AI will influence the industrial sector in 2019.

           In the retail sector, AI is expected to make retail recommendations smarter by recommending products and services that correspond to customers’ needs, enabling retailers to provide more a personalized shopping experience and subsequently boost their sales. Department and online stores will no longer provide product recommendations based on previous purchases. Instead, AI will be adopted to recommend products reflecting a customer’s personal style and attitudes, using algorithms to analyze data and make predictions. Smart retail recommendations have already been deployed by companies such as 1-800-Flowers, a flower and gift retailer in the United States. In 2016, the company launched an AI-powered gift concierge called Gifts When You Need (GWYN), a chatbot developed by IBM Watson, to intuitively guide customers through their shopping experience and provide tailored gift suggestions.

           In the business sector, AI will also have a greater presence. It will play a major role in cyber security by detecting and preventing cyber threats instantaneously. Many organizations have a vast amount of data, making them a target of cybercriminals who are looking to exploit data for personal gain.
As cybercriminal threats become more sophisticated, various organizations have begun to adopt AI to enhance cyber security. For instance, Darktrace – a leading cyber security firm – has applied the self-learning intelligence of the human immune system to develop a new technology called Enterprise Immune System. The technology adopts machine learning and AI algorithms to automatically detect cyber threats and deliver autonomous responses without requiring any evidence of a previous threat or pattern of activity.

           AI has been gradually developed and adopted by multiple organizations in the real estate industry, as reflected by the emergence of smart homes. In 2019, AI is expected to play a significant role in the sale and purchase of real estate. According to Bill Packer from Bank of America, smartphones will be able to provide recommendations to home buyers and suggest appropriate lenders based on personal data within the next seven years. A great example of AI adoption in the real estate industry is PadScouts, a real estate startup in Chicago. The company has recently launched SOPHIE, an AI-powered tool that uses big data to predict how likely a person is to purchase or sell a home based on the assumption that major life events, such as marriage or the birth of a child, are the motivating factors for relocation. This new AI-powered tool is expected to be deployed by real estate agents across the country in the very near future.

           As human-AI collaboration becomes more widespread in 2019, inevitably some technologies will begin to replace human jobs. As AI continues to stimulate competition in the industrial sector, organizations will need to respond by training their employees to work with AI in order to improve efficiency and promote the development of revolutionary innovations.

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