This blog post was originally published on Visma’s Norwegian blog. You can read the original post here.
Are you wanting to explore the infinite possibilities relating to implementing AI? The first step is, naturally, to develop a solid AI strategy. We will guide you through five things you should consider before implementing AI in your business:
1. Competencies
Implementing artificial intelligence requires expertise. You need to evaluate if that is a competence you want to buy or recruit in your company. The job function, Data Scientist, has been voted one of the most sought-after job functions of the 21st century. It can be a challenge to assemble the right Data Scientist team as their competencies are in high demand. Artificial intelligence does not live a life of its own and, in other words, must be put into production before results can be seen. At the same time, it can be a challenge to integrate the solution with the internal systems.
2. Data capture
If you want to implement AI, you need to have available data that your systems can learn from. A lot of the time the data quality is lower than anticipated and in some cases so bad that it is not possible to properly use the AI.
Data must be obtained in a way that allows the system to learn from it at a later stage. In many cases, business processes must be changed to better structure data. However, changing business processes when acquiring data can be a long process. It is therefore something that must be taken into account when considering whether the expertise should be internal or external.
3. Privacy and security
Many AI solutions are designed to make decisions that are ultimately about people. The consequences of that are that the data used for learning must be in accordance with the GDPR and that the project is continuously assessed. There must be a clear legal basis to be able to use the information.
Risks can be reduced by, for example, anonymizing the data set. However, be aware that this process is also seen as data processing and should therefore be approved and impact analyzed. Security includes more than just privacy, so as few people as possible should have access to the data and the server.
4. Ethics
Ethical AI is about AI making choices that we humans would have made ourselves. If you are not aware of these conditions, you may end up building models that inadvertently discriminate against people in an automated decision-making process. If, for example, you have conflicting conditions in the data sets, you may end up in a situation where your digital bank advisors reject all loan applications from immigrants, regardless of the ability to pay.
In addition to this, it is important to think about whether you want artificial intelligence to be explainable and verifiable. Will your system always make the same decision using the same input data?
Finally, it is important to consider exactly what the AI will be used for. Will AI replace some of the tasks for human work? If so, what other tasks should they take on instead? Perhaps AI should be used to increase profits instead of lowering costs and thus preserve the number of jobs.
5. The solution to a problem
Before it makes sense to implement an AI strategy, the problem must be in place. It is not necessarily enough to have sufficient data that you want to “do something cool with” to create value. Look inside the company and find the problem that needs to be solved. The basis for a successful AI implementation is a sensible business case.
