Let me share with you my ordinary day at the office. You’ll be surprised to see how much AI is actually part of my daily activities. (By Alex van der Stam)
Artificial intelligence in e-mail correspondence
Artificial intelligence, or AI, may sound irrelevant for some organizations. Nevertheless, more and more applications are already available that make it possible to use AI technology for certain processes. That is why AI has become relevant for every organization!
My regular routine first thing in the morning is to check my e-mail. Scrolling through the unread messages quickly is a fixed pattern. My -e-mail message already offers me the option to auto reply – and the auto reply options are indeed matching the content of the e-mail already. A time saver. But recently I am also assisted by an intelligent system that also looks at the content of the e-mail. This morning I was alerted regarding an outstanding question from one of my contacts, that I indeed had not answered yet. With a simple click I created a reminder for myself. It was as if a digital assistant was looking over my shoulder and making sure I wasn’t missing anything.
Artificial intelligence in scheduling meetings
My favorite personal assistant is Cortana. You probably recognize the hassle to organize a meeting with multiple people in different organizations. This may take a lot of e-mail and phone calls until the date is finally set. Cortana ends all this. Cortana; previously know as the virtual assistant is now returning in all kinds of Microsoft applications like Word and Excel, but also in Teams. Now i just send an e-mail to Cortana to schedule a meeting and it will do the work for me. Cortana has access to my calender and the calender of my team and is capable of finding a timeslot that fits my team. Then it sends automated e-mails to my external contacts with some optional timeslots. Respondents can answer in natural language. Once the date is set the meeting is automatically to the calendar of the participants, with a link to the Teams meeting. I use it almost every day!
Conversational AI; chat bots
As an online worker, and thus available for communication, I receive lots of chat messages from our website visitors. I can see that our chatbot has recognized that the language of the visitor is in Spanish and therefore our chat bot displays the Spanish language to this visitor. The messages are then real-time translated to my preferred language (Dutch). I can simply type in Dutch and the chat bot returns in Spanish. And more so; it turns out that the visitor is not even really typing, but uses speech to text via the Microphone of his computer.
In this way it is possible to support customers all over the world and make language barriers disappear. And suddenly I became native Spanish, or Chinese, or whatever world language.
And whilst writing this article, I used Microsoft Dictate. Since I can speak faster than I write, I can do things faster this way. And in the meantime I listen to streaming music by Deezer, which also uses AI technology to choose the music that fits my mood and make sure I’ll keep my focus.
Artificial intelligence in Security
This is where AI is the real gamechanger. Since security is all about proactively detecting uncommon patters. AI in security is about gathering all worldwide log data and analytics and to use this intelligence to ensure that we can work securely. A lot of malicious traffic will be stopped without us even being aware of. And, as you probably know, there are continuous intrusion attempts on e-mail accounts, applications and services. By combining this data it is possible to discover certain relationships on which security software can proactively react automatically, 24 hours a day 7 days a week. All this is impossible to do manually. Machine learning is far more accurate for this purpose. And, most importantly, interacts automatically and instant. That is key in securing your data and applications. We, as human beings, might possibly be to late, the harm could already have been done!
These examples indicate that artificial intelligence supports me in performing my daily tasks. For me, artificial intelligence is not a threat in the sense that intelligent software will completely take over our work. AI is a value added service that enables me to be more productive and accurate. If it helps me, I am sure it will help you as well! It is to be expected that we will find AI in more and more everyday applications on your PC and mobile device. At Universal, we believe that systems that also understand, interpret and take immediate action is really the next interesting phase. AI is no longer for large enterprises only, but available for every organization due to acceptable rates in a transparent subscription model. We are really excited to work with you and discover what AI can do for your organization.
