When people talk about one of the major appeals of artificial intelligence (AI) for businesses, the word “automation” quickly comes up as the great tech promise.

You can save time, reduce errors and eliminate repetitive and tedious tasks.

But what many still haven’t realized is that this traditional automation is no longer the core of innovation.

It represents only a tiny fraction of what modern AI can offer.

One of the key AI adoption challenges is overcoming outdated perceptions and understanding the broader, more strategic potential of AI.

If you’re considering whether your business is ready for AI, here are some things to keep in mind.

Traditional automation is mainly a mechanical process

Traditional automation is based on defined, simple and predictable rules.

It uses programs and robots that follow precise step-by-step instructions. These machines don’t need to learn, adapt or make complex decisions in changing environments. It’s the classic image of a machine tightening screws in a factory.

It’s efficient, doesn’t get tired and it saves money, but it’s incapable of improvising if something goes off-script.

Modern AI is designed to operate “in the unknown”

Artificial Intelligence can make decisions in uncertain environments, detect complex patterns and anticipate outcomes.

When AI can defeat the best chess player in the world, or even win at poker, a game of “imperfect information,” it’s not simply automating a series of programmed moves.

Instead, it’s evaluating possible future scenarios, adapting to its opponent, and making difficult decisions based on probabilities and the opponent’s behavior.

Why learning and adaptability are key to overcoming AI adoption challenges in business

For AI to be truly useful to your business, using a tool like ChatGPT or any other pre-trained model is not enough.

These models, however powerful, are, well… generic.

Many people dismiss the power of AI by pointing out ChatGPT’s mistakes. What they don’t understand is that ChatGPT is not a specialized AI. The world’s best chess player would consistently lose to Stockfish, an AI model specialized in chess, any chess player with some experience could easily beat ChatGPT.

Just as companies can train AI models to master specific games, the best AI for business is one that’s trained on your own data.

You can train it on how your supply chain operates, what your customer profiles are like, which common mistakes occur in your operations, and how product demand shifts based on different contexts.

Training an AI model with your own data is what will give your business a competitive edge since that data contains the knowledge that makes your organization unique.

For example:

• If you are a retail business, AI trained on your historical data could predict sales not just by the time of the year,, but also by the impact of local events, payday cycles, a customer’s past purchases or macroeconomic data.
• If you are in healthcare, an AI model could analyze medical histories to detect patterns and predict potential diseases.
• If you have a finance firm, an internally trained AI model could evaluate risk or predict which of your clients will be able to repay a loan.
• If you have an insurance company, you could train AI with your own client data to detect fraud attempts by analyzing thousands of variables like client history, time between claims, patterns in written justifications and matches with previous cases.

Incorporating AI into your business requires effort, knowledge and investment

To build your own AI model for your business, you’ll need to gather, organize, and process data, protect it and make sure the model is trained effectively. But the value generated, in terms of efficiency, competitive advantage, and predictive capability, goes beyond just automating repetitive tasks. Automation is useful, but limited and even outdated.

If what you really want is for this type of technology to work intelligently for your business, you need an AI model that understands your business from the inside. You can achieve this by training it with your own data!

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