9 Artificial Intelligence

AI is going to play a much larger role in business in the coming years, especially as it pertains to the analysis and leveraging of existing business data.

Unfortunately, this is going to come at the cost of jobs for actual people; for instance, Computerworld.com’s Scott Carey wrote about Japanese insurer Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance, which has already replaced 34 of its workers with IBM’s Watson Explorer artificial intelligence. The AI is able to calculate insurance policy payouts by analysing medical certificates, hospital stays, surgery and procedure data, which traditionally required human intervention.

The company believes this move will increase productivity by 30% while saving millions per year on salaries. Despite the high startup costs of 1.4 million British pounds (many, many ZARs), the annual salary savings will see the system paying for itself in less than two years.

Expect more and more big companies to adopt similar systems which they will use to sift through and analyse their data in order to maximise profits.

Next: Automation