The power of artificial intelligence (AI) to transform the consumer journey has dominated industry conversations in recent years. At its lowest common denominator, AI enables brands to better synthesize mounds of data and incorporate those learnings to improve the commerce experience. This is brought to life in a variety of ways from empowering store associates to enabling more powerful search to providing the personal touch.
AI, which refers to technologies capable of performing tasks normally requiring human intelligence, goes back centuries. The idea of cognitive computing gained steam in the 1930s when Alan Turing suggested that a machine could simulate any conceivable act of mathematical deduction. While AI technologies were commercially available by the 1980s, it was not until the 2000s that the cognitive capabilities that comprise the emerging machine intelligence trend truly took off. In 2011, IBM Watson famously beat Jeopardy champions, and personal assistants like Siri, Google Now and Cortana started to become mainstream. In 2015, Elon Musk and others announced a USD1 billion initiative to develop a safe artificial intelligence.
Now the confluence of three powerful drivers—exponential data growth, more sophisticated distributed networks and smarter algorithms—have propelled artificial intelligence to the center stage for consumer applications. Almost 60% of the 602 industry professionals surveyed by Euromonitor International in September 2018 ranked the impact of artificial intelligence on business in the coming five years ahead of the Internet of Things (IoT), robots/automation and the cloud, the most impactful technology of the last 12 months.
This opinion of what technology will most impact businesses has shifted over the last six months, when Euromonitor International last fielded the same survey. In the February 2018 survey, which had 1,445 respondents, the Internet of Things led artificial intelligence by several percentage points in terms of influence. Undoubtedly, both are important technologies that will impact businesses in the foreseeable future. During that same period, the influence of the cloud on businesses fell in the ranks to just below robots/automation. The perceived influence of robots/automation has been boosted by ongoing headlines about unmanned checkout initiatives from the likes of Alibaba, JD.com and Amazon.
In the same survey, Euromonitor International also asked industry professionals what aspects of commerce would be most impacted by key technologies like artificial intelligence. In the near term, respondents expected artificial intelligence to improve customer engagement, such as tailored marketing and personalized recommendations, as well as enhanced website search. Fast forward five years and respondents see artificial intelligence most impacting how businesses handle customer service requests. Artificial intelligence is a key technology empowering chatbots—the customer service rep of the future.
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