The 2020s have quickly cemented themselves as the decade when AI establishes itself as a revolutionary business tool. As the uptake of AI grows globally, business leaders need to consider how this game-changing technology can help them scale and thrive. Natalie Piucco, Chief Technologist at Google Cloud Engineering, shares her insights.
While AI might feel relatively new, its genesis dates back to the early days of computing. Alan Turing’s 1950 paper, Computing Machinery and Intelligence, proposed the ‘Turing test’ to examine a machine’s ability to mimic human intelligence. Computer scientists have gone on to build increasingly powerful technologies – from rule-based computing in the 2000s to deep learning and pattern recognition in the 2010s.
Fast forward to 2024, and AI is now broadly accepted as one of the truly revolutionary technologies of our generation. In the past week alone, AI has likely helped you drive the fastest route to your destination or recommended a TV series to you.
So, what’s possible for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in Australia? Let me first introduce two concepts – predictive AI versus generative AI. Predictive AI analyses large data sets to identify patterns – using historical data to predict the future. In a real estate context, for example, predictive AI can help predict a property’s market price by analysing its attributes – such as size, the quality of its local schools and the area’s crime rate.
In contrast, generative AI creates new things: new images, new text, new videos and new software. While both are very powerful tools, it’s generative AI that’s driving huge productivity gains across the global economy.
Generative AI is a game-changing technology that can be used to create new content, summarise and simplify existing information, discover insights and automate repetitive tasks. Under each of these four broad capabilities are practical problem solvers for Australian businesses:
Create: Generate new content and ideas.
Promotional content: AI can create video content, write your website articles and emails, generate your pitch presentations and post on your behalf on social media.
Virtual design: A vacant property or office space can be virtually staged with different design styles, helping you – or a potential buyer – imagine themselves in the space.
Summarise: Condense your knowledge base into simple formats.
Image and video summarisation: AI can extract text from images and video. So instead of manually annotating a video to post to your corporate website, you can upload the video into an AI platform with a prompt to generate a compelling description of what AI sees.
Condense content: Large amounts of technical content can be summarised and simplified by AI for new purposes such as staff training manuals or client-facing Q&As.
Discover: Make it easier for your team and clients to find what they’re looking for.
Contract analysis: Upload your contracts into AI to check compliance with regulations. You can ask questions about the contracts, such as ‘Are we compliant with this regulation?’
Chat bot for customer enquiries: A chat bot can be trained to answer incoming questions in real time, drawing on your past responses to customers.
Due diligence: AI tools can help streamline your due diligence processes. You can ask questions of the data, flag potential risks and automate document reviews.
Trend analysis: AI can analyse vast datasets. Using property as an example, this would include historical sales, demographics and market indicators to identify trends and help predict future price movements.
Automate: Create or speed up processes in your business.
Prioritising and triaging emails: AI can redirect emails to the appropriate department and classify emails based on sentiment. Emails with high sentiment ratings, such as complaints, are prioritised so they can be responded to quickly.
Repair requests: AI can find a supplier that’s a good fit for the repair request.
Automate your updates: Your social media or website posting can be created, scheduled and published using an AI tool.
