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By Artificial Solutions

In Getting Started in Conversational AI we take a look at some of the business benefits that conversational Artificial Intelligence delivers.

From speech enabled interfaces that improve customer experience, to intelligent chatbots that deliver 24/7 customer service, or humanlike digital assistants that drive online sales revenue, conversational AI is rapidly changing customer interaction.

ING is continuing to improve decision-making in bond trading. On 10 October, the bank launched Katana Lens, an artificial intelligence (AI) tool that helps investors to easily find and compare interesting trade ideas.

Co-created with Dutch pension fund PGGM, Katana Lens is a web-based application that uses predictive analytics to help bond investors make faster and sharper decisions within minutes.

“What used to take forever, now only takes five minutes and a cup of coffee,” said Santiago Braje, global head of Credit Trading, who announced Katana Lens today at the Artificial Intelligence Summit.

We need more realism in communicating AI

In 1965 AI-pioneer Herbert Simon predicted that “machines will be capable, within 20 years, of doing any work a man can do.” It was one of the first overpromises of AI and robots, but by far not the last.

In 2011 the IBM supercomputer Watson stunned the world by winning the tv-quiz Jeopardy, beating the two best humans of all times with a large margin. Ken Jennings, one of the two defeated humans, famously said at the end of the quiz: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” In the years that followed IBM cleverly developed the vision of revolutionising health care by using a retrained Watson to assist human doctors in making improved medical diagnoses.

When selling any product, it’s important to consider your customers’ experience in comparison with other products or services—even if they’re completely unrelated.

“The last best experience anyone has anywhere,” writes IBM’s user experience expert Paul Papas, “becomes the minimum expectation for the experience they want everywhere.”

Smart AI applications can automate some of the most tedious aspects of many professions. Because of that, it has the potential to improve both employees’ lives and a company’s bottom line.

Nevertheless, many people are still scared that AI will make many jobs redundant or prevent hires in the first place. We believe the opposite is true—and it helps to consider AI as a kind of employee itself.