The Pros and Cons of Current AI Tools

Using AI is all the rage these days. Seemingly every opportunity software developers have to add some type of AI or machine learning technology into their offerings is being taken; not only for the benefits that it gives their customers, but also for the marketing clout it immediately provides. This month, we thought we’d go into some of the ways AI is helping create more dynamic software and if it really provides end user value or if it’s kind of a red herring used by developers to position their products better in a more competitive market.

AI Does Provide Value

Getting into this topic, it is clear that AI provides value in some areas. Where AI helps the most is by enhancing opportunities to automate certain tasks. For most businesses, large chunks of their available capital has to be used to support their human resources. Not only does payroll take up large swaths of money, taxes, training, and other expenses tied to their staff often severely limit their available capital. It stands to reason that companies want their largest investment to return as much as possible.

AI-fueled tools can provide an avenue to automate repetitive tasks that, while necessary, don’t always add much in the way of revenue to their business. The more employees can focus on revenue-creating activities, the better, and AI-fueled automation can do quite a bit to help a business redirect their employee attention to these activities. AI can also work to help optimize an organization’s operations, making a business more efficient. 

Another huge benefit that comes with AI is the ability to get information about the business quickly so that decision-makers can structure their operations to take advantage of situations and opportunities more decisively. AI runs on data and uses the power of today’s computing to crunch numbers much faster than humans can pore through them. This creates situations where decision-making can be more accurate and work better for the organization as a whole. This isn’t limited to customer-facing decisions either. Workplace decision-making can really improve through the insights provided by AI-fueled platforms. 

AI Might Not Be as Valuable as You Might Think

Most businesses don’t want to fall behind and there is evidence that this often will influence decision-making on technology investments. Today, most organizations are trying to stay current, as so much of their workforce are tech savvy and will routinely jump ship to a better situation should they feel their employer isn’t putting up an effort to consistently improve the tools they have access to. This might lead companies to invest in tools that won’t provide them the ROI they expect. So, while there may be ways a company can improve through AI-fueled tools, they can also add unnecessary complexity to their business.

Since AI needs clean data to function optimally, if data isn’t structured a certain way, it can lead to bias pretty easily. This bias can negatively impact a business in several ways; especially if the tool was brought on to help with business intelligence. Another problem that a dependency on AI creates is that there have been situations where AI has misused customer data and that can be a big problem for a company. Many AI tools claim to help businesses build personalization in their sales and marketing processes. While this is proven to improve these efforts, if the data is used irresponsibly, it can cause relationships to sour and opportunities that the platform was brought on to nurture, to dry up. 

We Can Help You Navigate AI

At Preferred, our team of IT professionals can help you get the tools your business needs to be successful. If you would like to have a conversation about your hardware and software strategies, give us a call today at 708-781-7110.