AI won’t take your job but it will take away the pain of a flat tyre

Once the realm of science fiction,

AI

is transforming how big and small businesses around the world operate. At the annual Adobe Summit in Las Vegas, tech head honchos reiterated one important thing: AI will amplify human productivity, not replace humans.



“Nahi suna hai saab, woh AI kya hai," Jaswant admits to not having heard of artificial intelligence (AI), as he loosens the lug nuts of a flat tyre with greasy hands. It's a sweltering day in Noida, and a busy highway is not the ideal place to spend a Monday morning ruing over a puncture. And you probably won’t, a few years from now.

Standing next to another car, or at least a model of it, a young, software consultant from Bangalore is holding a phone and the gazes of some 17,000 people attending the annual Adobe Summit at Las Vegas, US. “This app shows real-time information regarding the fuel that you've consumed, the running cost, and even the number of times you've overshot the RPM,” said Deepthi Amirthagadeswaran, part of the team that developed Car Smarts, a potential future tech at Adobe.


Car Smarts, as the cloud-based app prototype is called, can map car health information, predict breakdowns, and recommend service requirements; the data will be available to both consumers and manufacturers for analysis and optimisation. That means before the battery is down, or a tyre is flat, your car manufacturer will give you a call and extend a helping hand. Well in advance, thanks to AI.


AI is going from the pages of science fiction to a real role in our daily lives, courtesy smartphones, smart home devices, social media, and media streaming services. It is also finding use in every kind of business, be it healthcare, retail, data security, security and surveillance, manufacturing, banking and finance, and even adding a personal touch to customer interactions worldwide.

Adobe, the California-based company best known for Photoshop and Acrobat, recently unveiled its next-generation Sensei, which makes AI and

machine learning

capabilities widely accessible to any business, including to those that lack or only have limited data science resources. Its Experience Platform stitches together data from across the entire enterprise to deliver personalised experiences in real time.

“Every business has to transform itself to be maniacally focused on the customer experience,” said Shantanu Narayen, Adobe Chairman and CEO, in his opening keynote at the world’s largest customer experience conference. “The trick is to know every customer as if they are your only customer. This takes data and intelligence.”
But what about the great fear that cognitive technologies will put masses of people out of work? Sensei is only taking care of mundane and repetitive tasks so that marketers and practitioners can focus on the more creative storytelling and high-value activities, Narayen said. “It will only amplify human productivity, not replace humans.”

So instead of losing jobs, Jaswant and his ilk will soon have one advantage: they’ll know in advance when to prep the wrench and spanners.

The writer was in Las Vegas on invitation from Adobe