AI IS A TOOLBOX NOT SILVER BULLET

The Alteryx platform supports integration with a range of data sources including, databases, cloud applications, big data platforms, business intelligence tools.

The UAE inflation rate is forecast to average 3.2% this year, a considerable dip from its 2022 peak of around 6.8% in the second quarter. While these figures are orders of magnitude less unsettling than those in the US and Europe, the economy is now undeniably global, so UAE business leaders are not immune to western instability. Recessions have been a recurring global phenomenon since 2008. In fact, many argue that the trend in digital transformation, both regionally and around the world, was mainly spurred by a do more with less battle cry that echoes to this day. The cloud was seen as a way to shave resource and financial costs by outsourcing many IT functions and shifting to predictable subscription-style outgoings. Artificial intelligence meanwhile, was seen as a means to tighten up production workflows, and as a tool for upending business models to stand out in a crowded market. The looming shadows of recessions, plural and a worldwide health crisis are scraping away at the businessintelligence function, eroding resources and manpower and threatening to demote artificial intelligence to luxury status once again. But not for the innovator.

Forward-looking businesses see artificial intelligence as a necessary source of value — the route to market leadership and longevity. This is because they have paid attention to history.

Artificial intelligence took time to prove itself; and prove itself it did. It has a track record of improving efficiency within core operations, and solving real-world problems elegantly. The innovators have already integrated artificial intelligence into their culture and reaping the rewards of everyday artificial intelligence. As far as

BY SID BHATIA Regional VP and General Manager for Middle East and Turkey, Dataiku.

they are concerned, artificial intelligence is no more superfluous than email.

Ai Is Not A Business Consultant

Everyday artificial intelligence enterprises think along similar lines. They are the enterprises who grasped the essentials of artificial intelligence — that it was toolbox and not a silverbullet. By that I mean that everyday artificial intelligence organisations understood that they needed to think about the changes they wanted to see in the business before applying artificial intelligence to those changes.

They knew that artificial intelligence was not a business consultant, so they set themselves the task of identifying the right people and use cases to make artificial intelligence work for their unique operating model.

By collaborating with one another — HR, finance, sales, and the rest — business units ensured that areas that were already highly optimised or that represent too little prospect of value returns were left to tick on by themselves while other processes got more attention.

This is especially important during times of economic instability, when everyday artificial intelligence organisations would never dream of giving up their data insights, which they would see as just as effective a remedy to recession as AC is to a hot summer.

Another lean-times goto for the everyday artificial intelligence business is training. If data teams are being trimmed or the plans to onboard that MIT-educated data scientist have been shelved, it is fruitful to look inwards.

If a business can find within its ranks those with aptitude and interest in artificial intelligence, they can upskill them. The lack of domain knowledge in artificial intelligence experts is a common project bottleneck.

By training internal domain experts in artificial intelligence, costs are saved in both recruitment and operations. This scenario would have seemed untenable just a decade ago, but today, no-code and low-code artificial intelligence platforms abstract the technical details of solutions development and put the intuitive design of smart systems into the hands of business specialists.

Some Use Cases

Everyday artificial intelligence companies can navigate rough economic waters more easily. Once business-unit leaders get to grips with the nature of the data that is most relevant to them, they can extract meaningful insights from it to manage supply chains more effectively, optimise product lines, or spot demand spikes and dips ahead of time. Factory floors can fine-tune quality assurance and marketing teams can target their messaging in a more granular fashion.

Artificial intelligence not only brings intelligence; it brings automation. Just as low-code automates development, some artificial intelligence platforms can do the work of a junior data scientist, automatically discovering insights and submitting them for review. When recruiting becomes prohibitively expensive, artificial intelligence can solve problems on its own.

This means that each insight is cheaper and comes more quickly. And everything can be led by domain experts who steer the artificial intelligence and review its work to optimise the value it delivers.

The takeaway here is that data teams do not need to be large to add value — artificial intelligence itself can recession-proof the talent pool. Data-science talent is rare and represents a significant portion, if not the lion’s share of the cost of each model and insight.

Recessions are great times to revisit wish lists and weed out the unnecessary in favour of the quick win. One example of an expensive to-do item is data migration, which drains monetary and human resources. The business can continue to generate insights without it, so placing it on hold will not put an end to Everyday artificial intelligence.

Advantage Yourself

Economic jitters are no reason to drop artificial intelligence completely from a business strategy, especially since it can help do many of the costcutting, efficiency-enhancing things enterprises look to do in a recession. While it will not be easy to harvest tangible value at scale during times of talent shortages and slimmed budgets, it is by no means impossible, and if successful, can turn a lean period into a historic turning point for an enterprise.

So, while the natural instinct is to cut, cut and cut during downturns, we should remember that they stop because a few bold innovators start spending again. And while hard times last, there is always a window for gaining an advantage. That is the spirit of everyday artificial intelligence.