All-pervasive Artificial Intelligence | Nigel Willson | Engati CX

Nige Willson, global speaker, influencer, and advisor on AI, innovation, and technology shares his thoughts on the all-pervasive nature of AI on Engati CX.

Nigel Willson is a Global Speaker, Influencer, and Advisor on Artificial Intelligence, Innovation, and Technology (Ranked amongst top 20 AI Influencers in the World). Also an ex European Chief Technology Officer but now an independent voice on Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. He is also the Co-founder of WE and AI whose mission is to increase public awareness and understanding of the risks and rewards of Artificial Intelligence in the UK.

All-pervasive AI — A talk with Nigel Willson

The following section is a summary of our interview with Nigel. But if you’d like to listen to the full interview, there’s a link to the Spotify podcast below.

As a recognized expert in AI and machine learning, can you share with us your thoughts on the state of AI and machine learning, its utility and adoption in organizations?

Almost everyone one, whether they know it or not, is an adopter of AI. Nearly every service, every smart device, or website uses a form of AI. It’s embedded in our culture. Organizations that are looking at projects specifically involving AI are categorized into different areas.

Adopters

People who are already using and adopting AI.

Experimenters

Those that have had AI projects in the past and are looking to see what additional benefits they’d get.

Skeptics

People who aren’t sure about AI’s value and want to understand what their ROI was going to be. Also those who see their brand a certain way, and don’t look at AI to transform their business.

Under this climate, the number of skeptics have reduced drastically. Now even skeptics are starting to see the value of AI and other technologies. s So now the biggest challenge is moving from great ideas to full adoption. Without the right sponsor, or team, companies will struggle with scaling.

How is AI helping countries fight the war against Covid-19? Any new developments?

The press has created a lot of hype around AI’s effects on COVID. If we cut through that, we’ll notice that it’s definitely helping in a number of areas.

1. Awareness

One of the first chatbots created during the crisis was created by Microsoft. It was a symptom checker for the CDC in the US for people to interact with. It educated people of the symptoms, and notified them if they needed medical attention. Google and Engati created a similar platform.

There was a statistic where 30% of the population did not have information related to the coronavirus in their own language. Awareness starts at the root, so chatbots were a great tool to provide information through multilingual support.

2. Diagnosis and Analytics

AI also helps in the medical field. AI is able to analyse chest x-rays and could even diagnose whether someone had the virus from hearing their cough. Systems are also put into place where AI can monitor whether or not social distancing is maintained or not. And AI and data analytics is also used to develop vaccinations.

You talk about the perceived risks of AI. What should organizations be watchful about?

As a result of the pandemic, there’s an increased risk due to the rapid adoption of technology. There are some risks that organizations definitely overlook and need to be aware of. Organization may look at taking shortcuts to get to their solutions as soon as possible- often without considering the full implication. An example is taking a decision based on AI without realizing the consequences of that decision.

So what can we do to combat this? A few things we need to be sure of is that that data we have is sufficient enough and that it represents everyone and is inclusive. Quite often, AI solutions produced as a proof of concept are likely to fail because of a lack of sufficient data sets. We need to be transparent about what data we’re collecting and how it will be used. We have to also ensure that there’s an end life of the data collection journey and that it will be deleted. This transparency will give us more sufficient data sets.

Another thing we need to work on regarding data, is making sure the data is diverse and inclusive. And this starts from the organization itself. There is a heavy male bias in AI and data science. We need to work towards getting more people educated and from more diverse backgrounds to account for everyone.

Nigel also finds that certain organizations get overboard with using technology. We shouldn’t rely on automation and AI solutions so heavily. The human aspect of decision-making is critical, so the best solutions are a combination of human expertise and AI. Organizations must be aware of the ethics surrounding AI. They must know what the consequences of each solution is to implement it in a responsible manner.

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All-pervasive AI — A Spotify Podcast with Nigel Willson

The rest of our interview with Nigel discusses how workplaces and businesses of tomorrow will leverage AI and automation, plus what the new normal is going to be post-pandemic. Nigel also shares how AI-powered chatbots are going to ultimately improve the customer service function.

Listen to the full interview here:

Engati CX

We hope you learned a lot about all-pervasive AI. Engati CX will be back with a new expert in a new episode soon. Stay tuned.

Find Nigel Willson

One of Nigel’s goals is to make his knowledge and expertise available to anyone who wants to start their journey with AI and machine learning. For more brilliant insights, find him on LinkedIn, Twitter or contact him on awakenAI.

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