Artificial Intelligence (AI) has become an important aspect of the future. This applies equally as well to Information Technology (IT) as it does many other industries that rely on it. Just a decade ago, AI technology seemed like something straight out of science fiction; today, we use it in everyday life without realizing it – from intelligence research to facial recognition and speech recognition to automation.
AI and Machine Learning (M.L.) have taken over the traditional computing methods, changing how many industries perform and conduct their day-to-day operations. From research and manufacturing to modernizing finance and healthcare streams, leading AI has changed everything in a relatively short amount of time.
AI and related technologies have had a positive impact on the way the IT sector works. To put it simply, artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that looks to turning computers into intelligent machines that would, otherwise, not be possible without direct human intervention. By making use of computer-based training and advanced algorithms, AI and machine learning can be used to create systems capable of mimicking human behaviors, provide solutions to difficult and complicated problems, and further develop simulations, aiming to become human-level AI
According to the statistics, the AI market is expected to reach $190 billion by 2025. By 2021, global spending on cognitive and AI systems will reach $57.6 billion, while 75% of enterprise apps will use AI technologies. In terms of national GDPs, AI is expected to boost China by 26.1% and the United States by 14.5% by 2030.
On a more local level, some 83% of businesses say that AI represents a strategic priority, while 31% of creative, marketing, and IT professionals look to invest in AI technologies over the following 12 months. Similarly, some 61% of business professionals point to AI and machine learning as their most significant data initiative over the coming year. In addition, some 95% of business executives who are skilled in using big data also use AI technologies.
The Impact of AI in Information Technology
The digital transformation and adoption of AI technologies by industries has given rise to new advancements to solve and optimize many core challenges in the IT industry. Among all tech applications, AI sits at the core of development for almost every industry, with Information Technology being among the first. The integration of AI systems with W.T. has helped reduce the burden on developers by improving efficiency, enhancing productivity, and assuring quality. If the development and deployment of IT systems at large scale were next to impossible, through AI’s development of advanced algorithmic functions this is now possible.
More Secure Systems
Data security is of critical importance when it comes to securing personal, financial, or, otherwise, confidential data. Government and private organizations store large amounts of customer and strategic data that needs to be secure at all times. By using advanced algorithms and by making use of Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence can provide a necessary level of protection to create a high-security layer within all of these systems. AI will help identify potential threats and data breaches, while also providing the needed solutions and provisions to avoid any existing system loopholes.
Enhanced Coding Productivity
Artificial Intelligence also uses a series of algorithms that can be applied directly to help programmers when it comes to detecting and overcoming software bugs, as well as when it comes to writing code. Some forms of Artificial Intelligence have been developed to provide suggestions when it comes to coding, which, in turn, helped increase efficiency, productivity, and provide a clean and bug-free code for developers. By looking at the structure of the code, the AI system will be able to provide useful suggestions, not only improving the overall productivity but also help cut on downtime during the production process.
Increased Automation
One major benefit of automation is that a lot of the “legwork” can be achieved with minimal or no human intervention. By using deep learning applications, IT departments can go a long way in automating backend processes that can enable various cost savings and minimize human hours spent on them. Numerous AI-enabled methods will also improve over time as their algorithms learn from their mistakes and improve their effectiveness.
Better Application Deployment During Software Development
When we talk about application deployment control, we need to take into account the various stages that go into software development. This means that the software versioning control is critical and highly beneficial during the development stage. And since AI is all about predicting possible issues, it has become an integral and highly-useful tool in detecting and anticipating problems during this stage. As such, these can be avoided and/or fixed without any major hiccups, meaning that developers will not have to wait until the final stage before improving the app’s overall performance.
Improved Quality Assurance
Quality assurance is, in large part, about ensuring that the right tools are used during the development cycle. To put it somewhat differently, AI methodologies can help software engineers use the right tools to fix various bugs and issues within the applications and adjust them automatically during the development cycle.
Better Server Optimization
Quite often, the hosting server will be bombarded by millions of requests on a daily basis. Whenever this happens, the server needs to open web pages that are being requested by users. Because of the constant flow of requests, some servers may become unresponsive and end up slowing down over the long term. AI can help optimize the host service so as to improve customer service and enhance the overall operations. As IT needs will progress, AI will be increasingly used to integrate those IT staffing demands and provide more seamless integration between the current business and technological functions.
Should Companies Implement AI?
There are plenty of ways that organizations can integrate Artificial Intelligence into their operations. One of the most common reasons is to optimize the company’s processes. Say, for instance, AI can be used to send out automatic reminders to departments, team members, and customers. It can also be used to monitor network traffic, as well as handle a wide variety of mundane and repetitive tasks that would, otherwise, eat up a lot of people’s time. This, in turn, will free them up to focus their time and energy on more critical aspects of the business.
Another added benefit for organizations looking to implement AI is in terms of the personalized customer experience that it has to offer. This will include everything from recommendations, answering questions, helping users find products, and more. AI can also be used by businesses to put together large amounts of data, which can lead to strategic insights and business intelligence that would have, otherwise, not be discovered.
In fact, some 84% of businesses say that AI will help them obtain and/or maintain a competitive advantage. Likewise, some 75% of companies believe that this technology will allow them to move into new businesses and ventures. In addition, some 80% of tech leaders look at AI as a means of boosting their productivity and creating new jobs. Also, some 79% of executives say that Artificial Intelligence will make their jobs easier and more efficient, while 36% see it as a primary goal to free up workers to focus on more creative tasks.
But for many companies, however, the prospect of implementing AI may seem challenging and unfamiliar. In fact, roughly 37% of executives say that the main obstacle in implementing AI in their organization is that the managers don’t understand how emerging technologies work. Luckily, when paired with the IT department, Artificial Intelligence will be much easier to integrate.
Will AI Replace IT?
One major reason why some organizations are reluctant in implementing artificial intelligent technology is that they fear that it will make many jobs irrelevant and obsolete. These expressed concerns that “robots” will take over humans are not totally unfounded as there are certain jobs that are better handled by advanced AI, particularly when the tasks require the analysis of massive data sets. Superintelligent AI has been used to perform some tasks faster and more effectively than the human brain ever could, largely because the machines don’t need frequent rest periods.
It is, nevertheless, important to keep in mind that this is not the first time in history when technology has resulted in the loss of certain jobs. However, these job losses have always been covered by the creation of new jobs, sometimes, in fields that didn’t exist before. While it’s next to impossible to predict the future of Artificial Intelligence with any high degree of accuracy, it’s relatively safe to say that the appearance and proliferation of the technology has followed a similar trend. It’s because of AI that there are now a plethora of new jobs in both existing and pioneering fields.
That said, AI will not outperform humans, as some may believe when it comes to some specific tasks that demand human intelligences and emotions. This is why it’s critical that Information Technology supports Artificial Intelligence. In more ways than one, AI works as a complement, not a replacement for the IT department. If we are to look in the not-so-distant past, many feared that self-driving cars will replace all truck drivers. More recently, however, both the CEO of Waymo and the former CEO of Uber have said that self-driving cars will not surpass humans. The main reason is that this type of technology will never be able to handle all the driving conditions as well as human drivers can. When it comes to some exceptional conditions such as unfavorable weather conditions or traffic congestion, human drivers are still better suited to drive vehicles that AI
Similar to self-driving cars, there are many aspects of Information Technology that will require human input and cannot be replaced by Artificial Intelligence. Instead, companies need to focus their attention on how AI can be used by IT professionals to improve the overall effectiveness of their business.
How Do Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence Work Together?
Aside from using AI in software testing and development, we’ve touched upon, the technology can also be used together with IT in the following ways:
AI in Service Management
AI technology and machine intelligence are also widely used when it comes to service management. When leveraging AI for service management, companies can use their resources more effectively, providing faster deliveries at a cheaper price. Thanks to its machine learning capabilities, AI will offer IT companies a type of self-resolving service desk which will allow them to analyze all of their input data and provide users with proper suggestions and possible solutions. By applying AI, they will be able to track user behavior, make suggestions, and provide self-help options to make the service management process more effective, overall. In other words, AI will provide users with a better experience through self-service.
In addition, AI can be used to develop Computer Vision (CV) technology that can be used to automate the visual understanding from a sequence of images, PDFs, videos, and text images with the help of M.L. algorithms. What happens is that CV replicates certain functions of human vision, but at a much faster and other, more accurate rate.
Machine learning and deep learning capabilities of AI will allow systems to analyze a request submitted to a service desk. The AI will find all concurrent requests, compare the newly submitted ones with those that have been previously resolved, and get an instant understanding based on past experience. The end result will be a solution to the request.
All in all, AI being such a powerful business tool, it can assist IT professionals in their operational processes, by providing them with a more strategic approach. By being able to track and analyze user behavior, the AI system will provide suggestions for process optimization and even help with developing a comprehensive business strategy.
AI for IT Operations (AIOps)
AI for IT operations refers to the use of Artificial Intelligence to manage Information Technology based on a multi-based platform. The main technologies used in AIOps are Machine Learning and Big Data. These automate data processing and decision making, using both historical and online data. The expected result of using AIOps is a continuous analysis that will provide answers and allow for the continuous implementation of corrections and improvements in terms of IT infrastructure. The AIOps platform used will connect performance management, service management, and automation to achieve its intended purpose and can be looked at as a continuous improvement of information systems.
There are several reasons why AIOps is growing in popularity over the past several years. Among these, we can include the ever-increasing volume from data collection systems, the increase in the total number of information sources, and the rising number of changes in controlled systems. As such, it’s also become increasingly hard for specialists and professionals to keep track of all of these systems, let alone respond to any issues effectively.
AI in Business Process Automation
As mentioned earlier, one of the biggest benefits that AI brings to the IT sector is automation. With AI being embedded in almost every work process, a lot of work can be done without the need of any direct human intervention. The capabilities of deep learning technologies will allow IT departments to automate many of their operational processes, helping them reduce expenses and minimize a lot of manual work. In addition, AI algorithms are designed to learn from previous experiences, meaning that they are continuously improving themselves.
It’s estimated that an AI system will soon be able to run and manage software development, in large part, by itself, being able to understand most, if not all intentions behind a code. If the systems will not be happy with the code provided or will find some defects and inconsistencies, it will fix it in real-time with minimal human assistance. AI will also reach a point where it will automate the process of running and managing company networks. It will be able to understand patterns that are created with network fingerprints while actually using the AI system, to begin with. By using AI for automation, IT companies will be able to enhance their AI applications in other niches. Put simply, AI will assist in running and managing computer systems and will, therefore, contribute to all other forms of computation.
AI in Fraud Detection
Modern technology has made it much easier for companies to detect fraud. At the same time, however, it has also multiplied the ways in which cybercriminals are committing fraud. Most businesses will need to use a multi-layered approach in detecting fraud, which usually will involve statistical data analysis and AI There are several Artificial Intelligence tools used in fraud detection. Among these, machine learning can process large amounts of data at a much faster rate than people can.
It can also be designed to become faster and more accurate over time Machine learning tools will be able to identify patterns of fraudulent behavior by looking at historical data that involved similar circumstances. The IT department will then use the synthesized data to take the appropriate action against these cyber criminals as well as build more effective preventive measures for the future.
Takeaway
Artificial Intelligence has been gaining a lot of traction in the Information Technology sector and shows no signs of slowing down. With its Machine Learning and Deep Learning capabilities, this technology is transforming many areas of the industry by making them more efficient, effective, and more focused on core tasks that need people’s attention the most.
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