“The pace of progress in artificial intelligence (I’m not referring to narrow AI) is incredibly fast. Unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deepmind, you have no idea how fast—it is growing at a pace close to exponential. The risk of something seriously dangerous happening is in the five-year timeframe. 10 years at most.” — Elon Musk
The rising use of Artificial Intelligence and research in machine learning is focused towards creating automated and smarter solutions. Any enterprise which wants to innovate is shifting towards the application of artificial intelligence. Thus product management should have an understanding of how machine learning is beneficial in widening the horizon of limitless opportunities.
If you want your enterprise to survive then adapting to changing requirements is of paramount importance. In this present day and age, acquiring basic information is not a problem anymore. Product Managers play an important role in defining ethical limits for the use of Artificial Intelligence. In order to achieve that, they must possess a sound knowledge.They should have an understanding of information processing and manipulation power of today’s computers. It is vital to know how artificial intelligence adds value and help in expanding their customer reach.
“I am telling you, the world’s first trillionaires are going to come from somebody who masters AI and all its derivatives, and applies it in ways we never thought of.” – Mark Cuban
Some of the advantages of applying Artificial Intelligence to an enterprise are listed below:
- Reduces errors and produces results with high degrees of precision, accuracy and speed.
- Decisions made using artificial intelligence are logical and sound. The element of emotion which cloud the judgment for humans while making a decision does not exist in machines.
- Repetitive jobs which are monotonous in nature for humans to do can be carried out with the help of artificial intelligence. Machines think faster than humans and can easily multi-task.
- Machines cannot be distracted and can tirelessly perform multiple tasks for hours.
- Machines are unaffected by hostile environments which may harm humans. These machines can seamlessly perform dangerous tasks such as space exploration.
- Machine learning allows the prediction of what a user will type, search, and do. For example, while writing a text in your smartphone, it can predict what word you will type next.
“AI is likely to be either the best or worst thing to happen to humanity.” –Stephen Hawking
Given the promises and advantages that Artificial Intelligence holds for the future, product management must know that there are certain limitations in developing applications with AI.
- In order to develop solutions which produce quick results by using machine learning techniques, computers of high processing power are needed.
- It requires a lot of human and other resources which are expensive so there are few companies that are willing to invest in Artificial Intelligence. Although, this number is increasing each day.
- The application of Artificial Intelligence is done by focusing on doing one task and repeatedly doing it. For making an organization to function entirely on the use of AI, other AI applications have to be integrated together to carry out different tasks, which makes it both highly complex and expensive.
Artificial intelligence can cause serious damage if used maliciously. Considering interaction with humans, there is a grey area of AI that needs to be addressed. This may pose a threat to humans. What happens if these machines turn against humans? Who’d be responsible for that? As jobs are being automated, will a time come that humans wouldn’t have to work anymore? An example of this is the Facebook Artificial Intelligence project which was shut down because the robots started to converse with each other in their own language. This language was not understandable by humans.
This is where the Product Management plays a vital role in helping manage and visualizing the objectives that need to be achieved. They are an indispensable asset of an enterprise possessing a comprehension of the development of the business cases. They have the cognizance of the non-functional requirements to enhance user experience. Realizing the ethical and moral aspect of the outcome is equally vital.
A machine is capable of processing information faster than humans. This is done with greater accuracy and speed beyond human imagination. The right use of this information and setting the limits needs to be understood. This is what the Product Management is responsible for. Earlier product requirement focused mainly on “What a product can do?” but for an artificial intelligent system, the focus has shifted to “What a product cannot do?”
Consider the example of the the popular and highly acclaimed TV Series “West World”. It is a story of a futurist fantasy park that gives the viewer a glimpse of human errors. It shows how an unknown error could lead to strange behaviours of robots. Even after deep analysis, unknown risks persist. Thus, defining how information shall never be used in a typical manner is the crucial factor for product managers.
A few among many companies that are progressing towards the wide use of artificial intelligence are listed below:
- Tesla
- John Paul
- Amazon
- Netflix
Google provides a complete information utilisation cycle from a user’s computer, watch, car, to their home by providing smart solutions using Google Assistant. The location of the smartphone is manipulated to provide services that play a crucial role in (IoT) internet of things.
Tesla is recognized for its extensive use of Artificial Intelligence. The cars have self-driving and predictive capabilities making it the true smart car.
John Paul is a luxury travel concierge company founded by David Amsellem, uses machine learning in predicting customer needs and managing client relationships. Currently offering services to large organizations in the world such as VISA, Orange, Air France.
Amazon’s advancement in A.I has proved its mettle in recent years. The refinement in its algorithms has come to predict exactly what the customer is interested in from their shopping online behavior.
Netflix is also utilizing A.I in predicting accurately what the customer wishes to watch based on their reaction to movies or TV shows. This technology is getting smarter and smarter by the year as the number of users grow.
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