According to research, AI is estimated to contribute more than $15 trillion to the global economy by 2030. This will make it the biggest investment opportunity in the world. With the new realities of the coronavirus pandemic, there is a need to adopt AI more and make use of efficiencies and augmentations brought about by increased digitization.
As companies rebuild their workforce post-pandemic, they can avoid repeating the mistakes made in the past. They must start by ensuring that the workforce is diverse, beginning with the candidate pool. They can achieve this by enforcing a hiring process that does not select candidates based on their race or religion. Instead, recruiters and HR must, at all times, mitigate bias in the process of hiring. This can be achieved using artificial intelligence, which automates hiring and rejections. With the help of AI, a candidate pool is narrowed based on different decisions based on performance and qualifications, as opposed to race and religion, among other biases associated with humans.
As companies seek to emerge from the pandemic, artificial intelligence will help organizations adapt to the new norms. For instance, AI-enabled robots will be used to perform tasks that previously required human workers to do, such as recognizing objects and moving luggage in factories and facilities. This has already be seen during the treatment of coronavirus patients where robots worked side-by-side with medical professionals in delivering medicine and other equipment in hospitals. AI-enabled platforms such as augmented reality and virtual reality will help companies simulate work environments and train employees in real-world tasks while reducing travel costs to the real office space.
With the help of AI, companies’ costs, revenues, and operating models will be changed. AI offers companies a chance to build resilience in their manufacturing operations and supply chain. It also promises to minimize cost and damages, which hampered success in the past. It also allows businesses to operate in a larger number of small, efficient facilities closer to the customer. These are some of the lessons that the pandemic has taught us.
As the pandemic keeps biting across the world, consumer habits are also changing to match the new normal. This affects the revenues of many companies, that initially depended on the brick-and-mortar stores since companies have moved online. As focus shifts, companies are also deploying AI-enabled solutions to learn new customer behavior and address their needs. Thanks to the potential of AI in data analysis, companies will be able to identify changes occasioned by the coronavirus pandemic, identify new trends, and new consumer preferences.
Going forward, companies must focus their employees on tasks that add the most value, such as designing algorithms, strategically monitoring inputs and outputs, and redesigning processes to accommodate humans and their integration with artificial intelligence. AI is likely to be the leading game-changers in history, that will provide a wide range of opportunities, such as efficient service delivery and greater on-demand services. In the post-COVID-19 period, successes of organizations will be determined by the way they adopt new measures and manage the tension that might be brought about by other pandemics in the future.
