Not to sound pompous, but this has been an extraordinary year for the field of artificial intelligence (AI), in more ways than what many experts would have imagined. In a short span of time, artificial intelligence and generative AI platforms have become game changers for many businesses, across a broad range of industries. For years, business leaders have been trying to improve their efficiency and boost productivity, while simultaneously improving their bottom line and reducing costs - now artificial intelligence is doing exactly what they have been looking for all this time. A small business recorded that nearly half, or around 48 percent of small businesses and medium-sized enterprises have already started using AI tools in some capacity in the past year. AI adoption survey It’s safe to say that the adoption of more advanced artificial intelligence tools and generative AI applications has been fairly successful, especially for smaller, more agile companies looking to get their foot in the door, while keeping their balance sheets intact. A Few Wrongs Make for A Terrible Mistake While there were some monumental moments this year that most people will remember as the field of artificial technology continues to develop, this wasn’t without a few or several memorable blunders. At the start of the year, several well-known technology and publication companies found themselves in hot water after publishing countless AI-generated articles that contained factual errors and cases of plagiarism. Quietly removing a few articles from a company website or blog is a lot easier than having to make up more than value losses. In late February, Google launched its generative AI platform, Bard, however, not everything went according to plan, and a few mistakes led to billions being wiped off the big tech’s market value within hours as share prices tumbled. $100 billion in market A flood of deep fakes surfacing on the internet, political leaders using leading up to the presidential elections, and a flurry of lawsuits had many companies up in arms this year as they tried to tame a wild beast running rampant in the streets. AI-generated imagery as part of their campaigns Not to mention former OpenAI CEO and ChatGPT developer, Sam Altman being booted by the same company he helped bring onto the map. Altman would later land a job at Microsoft, however, in a sudden change of direction, a new board of directors at OpenAI had managed to , offering Altman the opportunity to reinstate his role as chief executive at the company. reach an agreement of principles While artificial intelligence has been enjoying its moment in the sun, quite literally, the year ahead only brings more opportunities and new challenges. However, for small and medium-sized companies, with less experience, knowledge, and legal resources compared to their more established peers in Silicon Valley, running into a wall of trouble when adopting new artificial tools and systems can be a bigger, and more costly mistake than simply removing unfounded content from the internet or firing an intern. Problems that Organizations Need to Avoid when Building an AI Strategy Bringing AI into your business can be an exciting opportunity to experiment with new possibilities. However, without the necessary guidance, there are bound to be some failures along the way. As a small business owner, or entrepreneur, you need to clearly understand the importance of having clear objectives, but also what the long-term plan outlook holds. Lacking an AI Strategy Across different levels of the business, having an operational strategy enables you to navigate any challenges, and overcome barriers that you encounter along the way. Your strategy is your blueprint, guiding you toward the main objective of your business, product, service, and staff. Knowing the potential of artificial intelligence in the business environment will enable you to solve complex problems, and build more insightful solutions based on fundamental data metrics. Without a clear guideline, or strategy that will help work as the blueprint, you’ll find it more challenging to understand how artificial intelligence can do any good for your business, and how it can be useful to create more meaningful results. Knowing the business value of artificial intelligence is an important part of building an AI strategy, and creating forward-looking objectives for the organization and team. Being Inexperienced By introducing new tools, business owners will often need to have previous experience with the applications or have an existing team of employees who can skillfully manage working with this technology. However, with artificial intelligence, new applications are constantly changing, meaning that the expertise needed to successfully apply these tools in your business will either need to be an agile individual or a team that has the necessary experience to work with such projects. Having people onboard that are already equipped with the knowledge and experience of working with artificial intelligence, enables you to adapt quicker, and tap into various new opportunities simultaneously. Without a skilled team, or individual that can help guide you through the intricacies of these systems, making AI part of your business will only become more complex to resolve customer and business problems. Implementing the Wrong Tools Right from the beginning it’s important to know that not every AI application will serve a purpose for your business. The value is to understand how these tools work, and what their most basic functions are in terms of solving complex issues and boosting overall business efficiency. Ongoing research by found that more than a third of business leaders said that understanding the business value of artificial intelligence is perhaps one of their main challenges. Deloitte Without a clear strategy, or having considered which applications would be best suited for your business, customers, and employees, you will most likely end up wasting valuable resources on systems that are either impractical or don’t serve the long-term progress of your business. Knowing exactly what your business’s pain points are, and how AI can help resolve these problems could help create a more clear pathway to understanding the available various tools, and how each of them can contribute to the overarching development of your business. Failing to Test and Optimize Applications Contrary to your expectations, some applications have limited capabilities. This is often the case for more experimental tools that are either still in their development phase or have lesser-known real-world applications. Choosing the right tools isn’t enough. As a business owner and leader, you will need to constantly test these applications, and further ensure that these tools can be optimized for improved functionality. Consider a medium-sized real estate company that provides renters and prospective buyers with assistance in . Without optimization, these tools will quickly become outdated, perhaps providing clients with insufficient information or data related to their search queries. finding their next property By conducting thorough testing, and further making the necessary adjustments, you will ensure that the tools you have incorporated are working to the advantage of your business, and not in the opposite direction. Having Insufficient or Outdated Data Data has become the name of the game, and without having clear and relevant data, you will find yourself falling behind competitors and losing customers. Nowadays, nearly every company is using data as part of their decision-making process. By utilizing data, companies can make more informed decisions, develop tailored products and services based on their customer’s needs, and further optimize their systems to find applicable solutions. Within the ecosystem of artificial intelligence, data is a valuable asset that enables systems to efficiently resolve complex problems, or deliver more effective solutions. Using data, and most importantly, updating the data throughout the process, will ensure that AI systems can monitor changing circumstances, and overcome more challenging problems. Unlike more antiquated systems, AI systems will need to be constantly updated, monitored, and optimized to ensure more effective delivery of results. Additionally, as a business owner, you will need to consider how data changes over time, and that the outcomes delivered during the implementation process will likely be different several weeks or months down the line. Remember that implementing quality data can be just as important to the overall success and outcomes of AI tools. While having access to vast amounts of information can help a business or team better understand specific pockets of the market, it becomes a lot less valuable if the data is either outdated or no longer serves a direct purpose over the long term. Ignoring the Importance of A Risk Management Strategy Being a business owner is more than being a thought leader, or helping the company scale. A closer look reveals that many business owners often lead their teams through various challenges, and develop strategies to mitigate risks that can affect their near and long-term goals. Incorporating AI systems with a proper risk management strategy or plan can lead to bigger problems, resulting in the delivery of insufficient solutions, and further creating more cracks in the process. Although there are many business leaders and organizations that have been incorporating artificial intelligence within their business model over recent years - the majority of them often don’t have an AI risk management strategy or responsible AI program in place. In fact, one research by MIT Sloan Management Review and Boston Consulting Group found that while 42 percent of organizations had developed an AI strategy, only 19 percent said that they had implemented a risk management or responsible AI program. report Ignoring the importance of AI risk management, or not having a plan in place for when things go south can derail forward-looking plans, and require additional resources to resolve. Having Budget and Resource Constraints Incorporating artificial intelligence into your business model requires a substantial investment. For starters, advanced technology has become more than the traditional plug-in-and-play applications we’ve become accustomed to during the later years of the dot-com era. Having artificial intelligent systems is a long-term, and often continuous investment in the technology, data metrics, and expertise to manage and monitor these applications. Encountering budget and resource constraints could further back-track your progress, and derail the potential long-term objectives you’ve established. Part of the planning and implementation process requires the necessary allocation of resources that will help to support these applications, but more importantly, the various add-ons that help power artificial systems. AI technology is constantly changing and evolving. This would mean that your business needs to have the necessary resources to support this change and adjust direction every so often to ensure that existing applications are relevant to your long-term strategy, but more importantly, can adjust to a changing market dynamic. Ignoring New Opportunities for Growth As a small business, you will most likely pilot one or several AI projects on a small scale to consider the long-term needs of each application. However, those efforts would require you to plan for new growth opportunities, and ensure that the technology you’re using can scale as your business expands. With each new project, you will need to consider scalability over both the near and long term. As you begin to experiment with newer, and more advanced systems, you will notice different opportunities where these tools can be applied. You might find that one pilot project helps to resolve various problems you’ve encountered, however, applying this on another business level could mean that you are building towards a more robust approach to implementing AI applications across various functions of your business. On top of this, you will need to plan for ways in which you can allow these systems to scale as your business experiences different growth periods. As demand on one side of your business begins to pick up, you will need to ensure that AI tools are scaling with this demand and providing more efficient delivery. Not Aligning Your Expectations Having farfetch'd expectations regarding the possibilities of artificial intelligence can lead to increased bottlenecks in your business, and further cause you to incorporate different tools or develop different strategies to overcome these problems. Having a more dynamic, and open-minded approach will enable you to notice new opportunities that might present themselves at any given moment. More than this, it will allow you to become more agile, and realize that AI applications will only solve the problems it has been programmed to resolve. As a way to encourage the potential of any AI project, avoid setting the bar too high, as this would only lead to exaggerated expectations. Ensure that each project is carefully considered beforehand, but more than this, that you encourage a level of expectation that allows you to fail and make the necessary adjustments based on the overall success. Overlooking the Importance of Ethics As much as artificial intelligence is helping improve business efficiency and resolve critical problems, there are multiple concerns regarding the potential privacy violations these tools can have on a business and its clients. Already we’re seeing major players such as Google's parent company, Alphabet, and ChatGPT developers, OpenAI being regarding the breach of personal data and information of users to train AI models. hit with lawsuits While the use of this data is crucial for the forward-looking development of these models, illegally collecting this data, without prior user consent can lead to increased legal complications and damage your company’s reputation. As a business owner, you should be encouraged to address privacy issues with a transparent approach and ensure users or customers that the collection of sensitive data will be used transparently, and concerning existing privacy regulations. Keep in mind that artificial intelligence is an ever-evolving ecosystem that requires lawmakers to establish new ground rules that will help regulate the collection of personal data and information. But more importantly, protects users against unlawful data harvesting to train new AI models. Final Take Artificial intelligence can provide your business with new opportunities to overcome challenges and develop more dynamic solutions within a changing marketplace. As the landscape evolves, business owners will need to be encouraged about the potential these tools can present them with, but more importantly, how these tools can complement their forward-looking objectives.
