As daily headlines about the potential dangers of artificial intelligence continue to roll out, the benefits for business can become obscured by doomsday scenarios.
But for the 99 percent of American companies that are categorized as small businesses, AI can yield significant bonuses through increased productivity.
“When great AI works, it should look like magic,” said Balaji Padmanabhan, director of the Center for AI in Business at the University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business. “But under the hood, there’s a very deterministic logic that’s playing out, which is also important for all of us to understand because that’s how we understand what it can do and what it cannot do.”
Here are key takeaways from the session he led with Norma McCowin, chair of UMD’s Master of Information Systems Advisory Council, during the National Press Foundation’s Local Business Journalism Fellowship:
AI researcher: ‘If you want magic, go and watch Harry Potter’
But if you want to grasp the main way that AI can boost business operations, think about the rapid accumulation and analysis of existing information.
“(Modern systems) are powered by massive amounts of data as well as this learn-by-experience paradigm called reinforcement learning,” Padmanabhan said. “Just like humans learn from experience, these algorithms are learning from experience by playing in simulated worlds. These two are game changers because potentially if there’s stuff in the data that even humans cannot fully process, these systems can process it. This is why AI is doing amazing things like things, like medicine where we are generating so much data and knowledge – too much data – on a daily basis, but humans don’t have the time to completely process.”
Think of AI as a ‘superpower in your pocket’
Padmanabhan said the easiest way to consider incorporating AI into business operation is to think of it as a tool to boost skills like processing routine information. This results in more time to focus on more complex challenges that for now are better tackled through human interaction.
But don’t get it twisted: AI can make mistakes, and they can be spectacular. That’s why fears of a machine take-over shouldn’t make companies avoid AI, because a smart company recognizes the need for human contact.
“If you think of AI as this tremendously capable thing that can do a lot of information processing tasks extremely well, if we design it well for each one of us instead of trying to do our jobs, it should be our superpower,” Padmanabhan said. “It should be something that’s helping you doing your job the best that you can do. This is not how the tech companies are approaching building AI systems necessarily, but as enterprises start using AI, this is the mindset which will be very good for them to start adopting.”
Small business owners need hands-on support to fully engage with AI.
McCowin said she took several courses in small business and AI at the University of Maryland, and it ignited her own business venture. She’s enlisted the support of graduate students to support small business owners eager to learn more.
“What we do is we sit down with small businesses who are afraid of what they are hearing about AI and show them exactly how AI can make their life easier,” McCowin said. “What we’re finding is it gives them the ability to be able to remove redundancy in what they’re doing, create efficiencies for what they’re doing, and then be able to create the business value that they need.”
By helping business owners identify and access open-source tools, they can adopt technology more easily and create the value they need to succeed, McCowin said.
Access the full transcript here.
This fellowship is sponsored by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce as part of a journalism training and award program. NPF is solely responsible for its content.
