Published April 01, 2024
Publisher: Brittany Benjamin, TCS Intern

“[AI is] the most profound technology that humanity will ever develop and work on. [It is even more profound than] fire or electricity or the internet.” — Sundar Pichai, Google CEO

As the world grows more technologically dependent, the future of businesses involves the successful integration of artificial intelligence (AI) in daily operations. With AI integration, a small business’ foundations—cybersecurity, IT support, and regular day to day operations—can be enhanced and its effectiveness increased. AI is already frequently used by several government departments and agencies such as the Department of Commerce, the Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Justice, and the environmental and educational sectors. As a result of its gradual integration into well-known government organizations, its widespread use and attraction are inevitable.

AI is a tool that should be used in an assortment of ways to not only strengthen and safeguard a company but increase productivity as well. Failure to make use of these resources would cause the organization to face potential advancement challenges and they may fall behind their competitors. How can AI benefit an organization? The company and its employees are more likely to enhance productivity with the use of AI. AI is capable of bridging skill gaps that are innately present in humans as it is in our nature throughout the course of life. An experiment conducted by Harvard Business School tested various participants ranging from highly-skilled and less skilled participants which showed that all participants showed improvement with the lower skilled participants exhibiting the highest substantial surge in performance, thus showing 43% improvement. Employee productivity increases when self-contained devices or procedures are utilized because it helps reduce the time it takes employees to do tasks.

When implemented the right way, AI has the aim of lessening the human workload and improving, reducing human error, automating technical processes, and streamlining everyday processes by having the ability to be “on” and work 24/7 if needed.

AI Tools to know about:

• Data Automation and Entry: Software, algorithms, and tools used for data automation can be used to automate many otherwise manual procedures. Data entry automation can save expenditure on labor and human workload by automating repetitive operations and standardizing them. Furthermore, it can lessen the likelihood of human error which is the most common cause of costly mistakes and security breaches. When full reliance is placed on algorithm-powered AI tools, data entry involving calculations that are prone to human error can virtually be eliminated.
  
• Marketing: Marketing is a necessary tool that can catapult a business directly to potential customers. The use of AI can personalize the customer’s experiences by leveraging its ability to analyze and constantly tailor updates to the product to match the customer’s preferences. A level of customization and engagement that was previously impossible is now within reach for an organization because of its increased ability to look deeper into customer insights and behaviors. Popular trusted websites such as LinkedIn  have recently incorporated AI generated Copy Suggestions which uses OpenAI to increase content creation in less time than previously needed. These tools can be used to boost the organization further with less amount of work and with new insights discovered with predictive AI.
  
• Predictive AI: The predictive aspect of AI allows for organizations to study past and current data which facilitates their ability to identify patterns, emerging trends and make connections.
  
• Cybersecurity AI: Automation is upgrading security processes, such as patch management, which will automatically and constantly be scanning. Enhanced AI systems can be used to detect and block network anomalies and cyberattacks, keep an eye out for any unusual activity on computer systems, halt possible security breaches once detected, or alert humans to security flaws so they can solve issues themselves. Automation also allows the response to threats and attacks to be quicker by altering an organization’s cybersecurity department and mitigating the threats away from the most important or vulnerable systems.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has created a framework  that can be used as a starting point for small businesses to discover the possibilities and implementation of AI.