Artificial intelligence is all the rage these days. From content creation to digital marketing to customer support, every business operation is set to be enhanced and revolutionized by artificial intelligence. But with a history dating back to the 1950s, what innovations does artificial intelligence bring to the table today?

Has artificial intelligence become relevant to businesses today, and can you afford to ignore it anymore?

Why did Artificial Intelligence not gain Traction in the Past?

The ambition of creating intelligent computers for problem-solving is probably as old as these devices themselves. Pioneers like Alan Turing were already asking important questions and laying solid foundations for the field of artificial intelligence. Coupled with the government funding for research in these areas, most people thought that life-like robots that served you coffee and helped you with your math homework were a real possibility in the 70s.

The limitations that held AI back in the past were actually material. Computers of this era had little memory and computing resources. Resources were expensive to obtain, and several AI projects could not solve the problems they set out to solve. It seemed that tangible results required long commitments in terms of research and funding. Some problems seemed, and seem to this day, impossible to solve.

As the initial enthusiasm died out, AI projects faced a lack of funding and the AI winter set in.

So What Changed?

The advancements in complementary fields like electronic circuits paved the way for the creation of more powerful computers. As hardware became more efficient and less expensive, interest in artificial intelligence problems was revived. Research progressed, and funding was reinstated. AI saw slow but sure changes in the decades of the 1980s and 1990s.

Today, computing resources are cheaper than ever. But the cost of making impressive AI like ChatGPT work is still ridiculously high. A not-so-precise estimate of the energy consumption of ChatGPT by this article pegs it at roughly the same amount that 1,75,000 Denmark citizens consume in a month.

Despite being ridiculously energy-intensive, the fact that such feats are now possible is pushing the boundaries of AI and rendering new capabilities possible.

Should Your Business Adopt AI?

While concerns around the efficacy, efficiency, and affordability of AI continue, the fact today is that every business should at the least have an AI adoption strategy in place.

While we are still decades away from replacing skilled resources with artificially intelligent sentient beings, areas like Business Intelligence and Robotic Process Automation are already contributing impressive returns on investment to the businesses that adopt them.

At Cloudesign, we have personally overseen projects that have quadrupled an organization’s productivity by offloading mundane, repetitive processes to machine-learning-powered software robots.

These robots do require routine supervision, but they enhance your workforce productivity and improve their sense of well-being as they no longer have to waste time on boring, dead-end tasks.

Business intelligence solutions, on the other hand, enable firms to make intelligent predictions and formulate better business strategies with the help of advanced analytics and access to volumes of historical data.

In the short term, failing to adopt these strategies could mean your competition gets the advantage it needs to obliterate your market share. Hence no intelligent business today can turn a blind eye to the growing influence of AI in these domains.

How far will we get with AI and how efficient it will become are questions that only time can answer. However, it is increasingly clear that AI has real benefits to offer businesses in the immediate future.

Conclusion

Businesses should actively assess their technological capabilities, balance the cost of AI with the benefits it brings, and adopt an AI roadmap that prepares them for the future ahead.

Partnering with a dependable ai development company can alleviate these concerns and safeguard your business from technical uncertainties. If you’re a business struggling to find its way with technology, you can benefit from this free AI consultation Cloudesign offers.