Understanding AI’s Limitations Is Key to Unlocking Its Potential Posted on : Jan 07 - 2022

Artificial intelligence (AI) is revolutionizing many processes across industries and applications—digital customer service assistants, autonomous vehicles, robots in retail warehouses. AI can even write a news article start to finish. There’s certainly no lack of hype around the technology, and its application in business settings from a practical sense is nothing short of life-changing. However, AI comes with its drawbacks.

It’s not a silver bullet for every business qualm, despite what some hype men may promise. The key to harnessing the full potential of AI—and its subfields of machine learning and deep learning—is to understand its limits. Recognizing where AI works and where it does not is a skill many business leaders have yet to master.

Today’s AI is Weak

So far, AI applications can only perform the tasks for which they were specifically developed. In other words, the AI we know today is weak. It can’t answer every question, it can’t behave flexibly, and it certainly can’t think or comprehend for itself (yet). So, take the promises of an AI-holy grail with a grain of salt. AI is no more than a tool.

Critical Questions About AI

To discern where AI can improve business processes and where it cannot, it’s important to take into account its legal and ethical considerations, its biases and its transparency. Asking critical questions about certain AI applications is critical to setting a project up for success and avoiding risk down the line.

From a legal perspective, we must decipher who carries responsibility for a bad judgment call (i.e. a self-driving car hits a pedestrian). We also must recognize that there is bias when working with cognitive-based technology. AI learns from the data it gets; however, it doesn’t have the means to question this data, which means that data sets can easily skew in one direction and leave AI to adopt bias. View More