AI is upending the workplace.
As one of the most versatile technologies we've ever encountered, it's not surprising that AI’s applications and implications span many departments, divisions, and functional groups.
When crafting and deploying an AI strategy, the most effective organizations will consider how it affects all aspects of their organizations. I recommend organizations ask and answer five fundamental questions.
How can AI increase employee efficiency?
In a typical 8-hour workday, the average worker is productive for fewer than 3 hours. We spend almost 2 hours each day attending to emails alone.
AI can assist your employees in automating the routine tasks that cause them to be inefficient. From personal assistants to phone managers to "smart" calendar systems, the potential is vast.
Especially exciting are the technologies that render lengthy documents more readable. Apollo, for example, parses articles and PDFs into easily-digestible bullet points.
Similarly, Agolo leverages AI to generate summaries of text and other information. Canadian-based Beagle translates contracts into comprehensive visual summaries.
Equally exciting are technologies that generate text for us. Gartner predicted (in 2015) that 20% of business content would be authored by machines by 2018. In 2014, The Associated Press partnered with AI company Automated Insights to create a Chrome extension that automatically generates written explanations for Tableau graphics.
Think about the most pressing bottlenecks hampering your employees’ efficiency. Determine whether it's worth the time, cost, and effort to leverage AI to remove some of these impediments. How much time could be saved if your next management report was essentially drafted for you by AI?
