Last month, I was having a discussion with one of my clients. During the discussion, I found out that cloud applications and SaaS have changed the business landscape and helped business owners. After the cloud ERP solution, my client was saving around $2,000 per month by not having hardware and its maintenance, IT people, etc.

I was wondering how artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) could change the lives of business owners and the industry. Today we see them at all stages of our lives, but we cannot distinguish them separately. They are part of our life.

How AI and ML are disrupting the industry?

AI, in the manufacturing industry along with IOT tools, suggests CNC machines on what to produce, when to produce, and how much to produce. This has improved efficiency and the use of machines, manpower, etc. The production pipeline has become smooth without many surprises as ERP and IOT meet demand and supply as this decision information is passed to different touchpoints that would execute the same thing. Define some standard patterns and the rest is done automatically. Hardware and its preventative maintenance are monitored and AI maintenance, issues, and maintenance of your data center are affected.

AI and ML are changing the way we buy items, make sales, buy rentals or sell houses etc. Even dating apps are helping many to find suitable partners. AI and ML’s control Amazon’s book recommendation, Google suggests correct information or promotes ads, etc. The labor market is shrinking. Much mundane work is replaced with technical tools.

AI and ML have improved the life of online shoppers with correct messaging, supporting information on additional items, etc. Now ML automatically learns user patterns and suggests what to buy. These tools have helped many online e-commerce companies to target the products to the right cohort of Customers and learn more about their buying clothes, when and where they can buy etc.

Based on your “social” credit history, few companies help you get loans or guarantee you get a home, etc. (Ant Financials)

AI tools have also disrupted the agricultural sector. Activities that are too sensitive to data, difficult to sit down and analyze have now been simplified. Now we can measure and monitor crop yield, productivity, soil fertility and lack of nutrition, etc. Many Agritech companies rely on AI and ML to feed the data to the algorithm and see what happens.

How is our personal life interrupted to make it simple?

Previously, we used to call the taxis on the road or call the taxi companies to book a taxi. Now we use apps and no more stops on the road. UBER, Ola, GoJek have changed the need to own a car and pay maintenance. The money saved is huge considering the savings on car maintenance costs, insurance and parking fees, etc. This reduced highway traffic and blockages during rush hour, saving millions of dollars in fuel.

Google is launching the driverless car economy. AI supervised learning helps verify car movement; your surroundings, nearby cars or any other vehicle, etc. This is helping to protect passengers and other surrounding property. UBER is already talking about buying these cars for its fleets and also developing its own self-driving cars.

AirBnB and Oyo have increased the quality of hotel experiences, while prices have gone down. OYO redefined the end-user hotel experience by raising the bar on rooms and services. Guests are guaranteed to receive the same treatment at multiple hotels. Now a day customers DO NOT check the name of the hotel and its credibility etc. The customer is checking whether the hotel is OYO rated or not. This ensures the quality and minimum standard of services.

Lots of big companies that don’t own anything, but control most of our lives.

1. Uber, Ola – Car service company, which integrated distributed taxis

2. AirBnB and Oyo: Helped integrate smaller hotels and improved customer experiences.

3. Google – Search Engine and Ads

4. Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud – Provides the infrastructure to manage and run applications at a fraction of the original cost of purchasing a server.

So what is going on here?

Many IT jobs are already suffering. Development tools are reducing the number of developers needed, Selenium-like tools are replacing manual testing. We have created the tools that reduce the duration of web application tests by 80%.

But the side effect of this is that many have lost jobs and income-generating opportunities.

How does machine learning work?

If you see the above business, they don’t own any properties, but they control the activities as they use AI and ML that feed back the information to the app. One of the ways ML works is that you need a lot of transaction data to analyze and come up with patterns and learn from them.

For the machine learning algorithm to work, a lot of data and feedback is required to create your own patterns, test, learn and implement new ones. Many healthcare startups are using AI and ML to scan the digitized reports and feed the data to AI and are recreating the models for analysis.