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Tag: Artificial Intelligence

Artificial Intelligence for Social Good: Transforming Global Challenges with Innovative Solutions

Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing our approach to solving social and global challenges by offering innovative ai products, insights and decision-making capabilities. With its ability to analyze vast amounts of data, recognize patterns and learn from experiences, AI has the potential to make a profound impact across various domains. Here, we explore AI’s critical roles in addressing social and global challenges.

READ: AI Revolution — Unveiling the Transformative Power and Unforeseen Consequences

Empowering Education: AI’s impact on learning and accessibility

AI can personalize learning experiences, adapt to individual needs and provide targeted student support. It can assist educators in designing personalized curricula, identifying learning gaps and facilitating remote education. Furthermore, AI-powered tools can enhance accessibility for students with disabilities, ensuring inclusive education for all.

Enhancing Healthcare: revolutionizing medical diagnosis and treatment

AI can significantly improve healthcare outcomes by analyzing medical data, identifying patterns and aiding in diagnosis. It can help detect early-stage diseases, recommend treatment plans and assist in surgical procedures. Additionally, AI-enabled telemedicine platforms can expand access to quality healthcare, particularly in remote or underserved areas.

Sustainable Development: AI solutions for environmental conservation

Addressing environmental challenges requires effective resource management. AI can play a vital role by optimizing energy consumption, analyzing climate data and predicting natural disasters. It can facilitate precision agriculture, sustainable transportation systems and efficient waste management, contributing to a greener and more sustainable future.

Promoting Equality and Inclusion: AI’s potential for social justice

AI technologies can help mitigate biases and promote equality. AI algorithms can reduce discrimination and ensure equal opportunities by using inclusive datasets and implementing fairness measures. AI-powered tools can aid in combating hate speech, online harassment and social inequalities, fostering a more inclusive and just society.

READ: Unlocking the Power of DEI — Building Better Programs for Business and People

Crisis Response and Humanitarian Aid: AI’s role in disaster management

AI can support disaster response efforts during crises and natural disasters. It can analyze real-time data, monitor affected areas and facilitate rapid decision-making. AI-powered chatbots and virtual assistants can also provide critical information and support to affected populations, ensuring efficient humanitarian aid delivery.

Ethical Considerations: balancing benefits and risks of AI implementation

While AI holds immense potential for social good, ethical considerations must be addressed. We need to ensure transparency, fairness and accountability in AI systems. Striking the right balance between technological advancements and safeguarding individual rights and privacy is essential.

Collaborative Partnerships: Public-private cooperation for social impact

Collaboration between governments, private organizations, academia and civil society is crucial to maximize the positive impact of AI for social good. Public-private partnerships can drive research, innovation and implementation of AI solutions, fostering a collective effort toward addressing global challenges.

Policy and Governance: navigating AI regulations and standards

Developing robust policies and governance frameworks is necessary to harness AI’s potential effectively. Governments and international organizations must collaborate to establish ethical guidelines, privacy regulations and accountability mechanisms to ensure responsible AI development and deployment.

READ: Colorado Privacy Act (CPA) — Everything You Need to Know

Inspiring Innovations: case studies and success stories

In the realm of AI for social good, numerous inspiring case studies and success stories highlight the transformative impact of innovative solutions. These stories showcase how AI has been leveraged to address social challenges, drive positive change and improve people’s lives. Let’s look at some notable case studies and success stories:

  • Healthcare Diagnosis: AI-based systems, such as DeepMind’s AlphaFold, have made significant strides in predicting protein structures, a crucial step in understanding diseases and developing new treatments. This breakthrough has the potential to revolutionize drug discovery and personalized medicine.
  • Environmental Conservation: Conservationists use AI technologies to combat poaching and protect endangered species. For instance, AI-powered drones and camera traps have been instrumental in monitoring and preserving wildlife populations, as seen in the efforts to protect African elephants and rhinos from illegal poaching.
  • Precision Farming: AI-driven precision farming techniques have revolutionized agricultural practices. For example, companies like FarmWise utilize AI-powered robots to identify and precisely remove weeds, reducing the need for herbicides and improving crop yields, contributing to more sustainable and efficient farming.
  • Humanitarian Aid and Refugee Support: AI has played a vital role in supporting humanitarian aid efforts and assisting refugees. Organizations like the UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) have utilized AI to provide critical services, including language translation, education and access to information for displaced populations.

READ: Revolutionizing Agriculture with Machine Learning — Achieving Sustainability for a Healthier Planet

Looking ahead, the potential of AI to transform society and tackle global challenges is immense. As technology advances and collaborations strengthen, AI can drive positive change, fostering a more sustainable, inclusive and prosperous world.

 

Alina Samchenko HeadshotAlina Samchenko is a passionate technology enthusiast with a keen interest in AI products, blogger, and author of https://www.aiproductslist.com/.

4 Prompts and Tips for ChatGPT: A Comprehensive Guide for Marketers

AI isn’t a cure-all for lazy marketers. It’s not going to write every blog for you at the level of quality you want. It’s not going to give you all of the secrets to success. AI is a great tool to help you generate ideas when you hit a roadblock. It’s never going to (or shouldn’t be allowed to) be a replacement for true creativity and human expression. You still add the “human” to the intelligence.

READ: AI Revolution — Unveiling the Transformative Power and Unforeseen Consequences

ChatGPT isn’t going to eliminate your job — but it will eliminate the tedium

The introduction of ChatGPT into the workplace has been met with an array of reactions. On the one hand, there are those who view it as a threat to their livelihood and job security; on the other hand, however, many have embraced its potential to free them from mundane tasks while still allowing them to contribute in meaningful ways. There’s a powerful argument that can be made either way about what types of AI content should/shouldn’t be permitted to be used in the world. But what we’re going to cover here is simple and process-related — and something every business should be learning how to do right now. 

Prompts to help ChatGPT help itself

Perhaps the most important aspect of working with ChatGPT is understanding how to communicate with it. Ask it for clarification. Ask it if it understands your questions and direction. Ask it to ask you questions so it can come up with information that’s actually useful.

ChatGPT is a language model, but it’s an incredibly intuitive language model. It knows what it needs to do virtually any task successfully. Ask how to implement its ideas. Ask where to implement its ideas.

A prompt we’ve used with success: How can I improve the quality and relevance of the prompts I provide to ChatGPT for more accurate and helpful responses?

Prompts to Kickoff the brainstorming process

Brainstorming methods are important tools to have in any organization’s arsenal when considering creative problem-solving. There are many different approaches available, from using visual cues like images or diagrams to creating open-ended discussions with team members.

Prompts can help kickoff brainstorming sessions by providing a jumping-off point for discussion, as well as helping to generate new ideas that may otherwise go unnoticed. Additionally, prompts can provide structure and direction during the brainstorming process, which can lead to better results overall.

A prompt we’ve used with success: How can my team enhance our brainstorming sessions to generate more creative and impactful marketing ideas for our client in the [industry] industry? Give 3 specific examples.

Prompts to help define a marketing strategy 

Prompting techniques provide a foundation from which marketers can create meaningful and impactful campaigns that bring about tangible results for their clients through strategic planning backed up with data-driven decisions regarding budget allocation and targeted audiences.

A Prompt we’ve used with success: What are some key considerations and actionable steps to develop a marketing strategy that maximizes return on investment (ROI) for my business?

READ: From Clicks to Conversions — How to Craft an Effective Online Advertising Strategy

Prompts to help analyze Google Ads data

Data analysis of Google Ads can be a daunting task, but prompts can help in this area of digital marketing as well. 

Sometimes we know why an ad isn’t performing. Every digital marketer on the planet has (or should have) a troubleshooting checklist for ad performance, from copy and graphics to video and landing pages. But sometimes we could use a little help to get the thought process flowing, especially if the answers aren’t revealed in our usual checklist. Google Ads troubleshooting is something that ChatGPT is surprisingly astute at.

A prompt we’ve used with success: How can I diagnose and address the issue of low Click Through Rate (CTR) in my Google Ads account to improve campaign performance? 

The Bottom Line

ChatGPT has been a boon for organizations, allowing them to focus on their core competencies. 

In the way that we’re promoting ChatGPT in this article, it stands to reason that it will in fact HELP creativity, rather than eliminate jobs where creativity is key. 

The prompts in this article are only a few ways we’ve been able to incorporate AI technology into our AI-era workflow. The most important thing to remember when it comes to ChatGPT is that its most intelligent quality is its ability to give you the information you need to get the most out of it. You’re still the one who makes the content human.

 

This article is sponsored content.

AI Revolution: Unveiling the Transformative Power and Unforeseen Consequences

The technology buzz over the last several months is the rapid revolution of AI (artificial intelligence) and such new manifestations of it like ChatGPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) that, it is said, can draw on the vast universe of all human knowledge to generate human-like writing and question responses/answers at super-human speed. AI can, apparently, also write its own computing code to solve challenges instantaneously; apparently AI is capable, or soon will be, of performing tasks in mere minutes that it would take actual human engineers a billion hours to complete. Just so you know, a billion hours is 114,155.251 years.

READ: AI in Insurance: How New Technologies are Changing the Game

I’ve been reading up on AI and the related robotics developments tied to it, and I watched the “60 Minutes” report from Scott Pelley on AI, and I have naturally been astounded by the leaps in technology. Thrillingly, the developers of AI point out the enormous and powerful potential benefits of the technology, like giant leaps in medicine and combating climate change and a host of other worthy challenges. I have also been horrified by the declarations of the people at such firms as Google developing AI that even they don’t quite fully understand how it is capable of the things it is doing.  

It strikes me that this is all the plot of scores of movies and several episodes of “The Twilight Zone” where people invent machines that eventually figure out they don’t need people at all. As “Twilight Zone” creator Rod Serling so presciently put it more than 60 years ago at the end of one such episode, “… too often man becomes clever instead of becoming wise, he becomes inventive, but not thoughtful. And sometimes … he can create himself right out of existence.” Cue the creepy “Twilight Zone” music… 

So what is AI? I went to the new Microsoft Bing Chat bot and requested a short paragraph explaining AI, and it generated: “Artificial intelligence is a branch of computer science that focuses on building and managing technology that can learn to autonomously make decisions and carry out actions on behalf of a human being. AI refers to the simulation of human intelligence in machines that are programmed to think like humans and mimic their actions. The term may also be applied to any machine that exhibits traits associated with a human mind such as learning and problem-solving.”  

That last bit worried me in that “traits associated with the human mind” can also, obviously, include callousness, malevolence, cruelty, violence and, most problematically, very narrow self-interest. I also asked the Bing chat bot to address the dangers of AI, and it replied: “invasion of personal data, risk of cyber attack, discrimination and bias, opacity and lack of transparency, replacement of jobs and unemployment, and socioeconomic inequality.” Then it added: “We need to ensure that AI is developed and deployed in a way that respects human dignity, rights, and interests.” The damn thing scares even itself!  

READ: AI in Employment — A Troubling Issue in the Hiring Process

In the end I don’t really worry about the technology and the machines themselves, as they have no real built-in egos and agendas. But the people who control them do have egos, and personal and business motivations. That, I believe, is the real issue here: the too-few people involved in the creation and deployment of these technologies are automatically and inexorably suspect. And we don’t seem to have any real checks and balances in place.  

These few developers — Google, Microsoft, a micro set of startups and a few companies in Europe and China — all give out the same earnest platitudes that they are protecting privacy and security, while at the same time setting a goal of creating more jobs than they supplant. They are, so they say, benevolent.    

Big oil said the same 100 years ago, but clearer minds thought the monopoly was so threatening that we broke up Standard Oil. That was just oil — Artificial Intelligence is everything.  

No matter what they do or say, the business motivation can and will be, at least in part, a stark contrast to public interest.    

We would do well to revisit the cartoonist Walt Kelly’s response to pollution on the first Earth Day. Looking at all the trash, he had his famous character Pogo say: “We have met the enemy and he is us.” 

 

Jeff RundlesJeff Rundles is a former editor of ColoradoBiz and a regular columnist. Read this and Rundles’ blog, Executive Wheels, at cobizmag.com or email him at [email protected]. 

AI in Mobile App Development — Top 8 Tools and Strategies

Artificial intelligence is a real product of the continuous progress and development of science and technology. This intelligent technology is incredible and can revolutionize the world completely. According to Statista report, the AI software market is going to generate nearly $126 billion by 2025. That’s why it’s so important to implement AI in mobile app development.

As per a survey, nearly 37% of worldwide brands have opted for AI technology in different forms. From voice assistants to predictive text to image recognition, a lot can be done using AI. 

READ: AI in Insurance: How New Technologies are Changing the Game

The mobile application development field is also gaining popularity in tech innovation and is expected to generate $613 billion by 2025. It is no longer a doubt that, when combined, these two different technologies can solve a lot of problems and generate good revenue.

Let’s take a look at the top 8 ways to implement AI in mobile apps.

Ways to implement AI in mobile app development

If you implement AI rightly in app development whether in native, web or hybrid app development, it can give you enormous benefits, including a customized user experience and task automation.

Image Recognition

Image and object recognition is one of the excellent AI features that you can take full benefit of in your mobile app development. Users can use this technology to scan and search for any recognizable object, or other relevant images, sometimes also implementing augmented reality.

One of the implementations of this technology is in healthcare. The staff can upload the scanned photo of the potential medical abnormality, and the AI algorithms, with their vast database and machine learning, can analyze the condition and come up with a diagnosis.

The application of image recognition is vast. It can go from gaming to eCommerce platforms to social media filters.

Voice recognition

Voice recognition is one of the most widely known AI technologies for mobile apps. AI-based voice recognition competence lets the users interact with the apps using voice commands and thus operate the apps seamlessly with more convenience and hands-free. 

One of the most popular examples is Amazon’s Alexa and Google’s Voice Assistant. It delivers customized replies to the users who have instructed their voice assistant to acknowledge their voice.

READ: AI for Customer Service: 5 Easy Ways to Help your Customers

Biometrics

Biometrics is another intelligent AI-powered technology that measures human behavior and physical characteristics. The main purpose of using this technology is to identify individuals for surveillance purposes. 

The well-known techniques used under biometric surveillance are fingerprints, iris or face recognition and DNA-based recognition. It is used to avoid any fraud, like in examination entries or any bank-related entry.

Chatbots or Conversational Robots

Another interesting way to implement artificial intelligence is Chatbot. It helps to get an efficient interaction of the company with its customer for any feedback form or inquiry. With the help of natural language processing, chatbots allow you to automate the responses to customers’ queries whenever necessary.

Chatbots are everywhere these days – WhatsApp support, Microsoft’s bot framework and Facebook messenger botare just a few examples. One of the basic reasons to have conversational bots for your business is to save operational costs for business. What’s better than satisfying customers with instant replies that too in less cost? 

Machine Learning

Machine learning is another well-known way to use AI in mobile apps, especially business apps. If you need classification or prediction-based features in your application, machine learning is good to have feature.  

You can take Forecasting based applications, like weather forecasting, to the next level with this smart AI-powered feature. Google Translate is also one of the best examples of machine learning technology. 

READ: Revolutionizing Agriculture with Machine Learning: Achieving Sustainability for a Healthier Planet

Predictive Analysis

Predictive analysis is any business app that can aid in predicting personalized recommendations for products or services. This AI-based feature helps you to know the user’s behavior patterns and give predictive results. This allows you to boost user engagement and win customer loyalty, which also aids in improving your brand’s credibility. 

Emotion Recognition or Sentiment Analysis

This smart AI feature is based on advanced image processing to monitor human emotions with speech and voice signals. It deciphers what human thinks about your brand, which allows you to give your customers tailor-made service based on their likes and dislikes. Consequently, it gives a big room for improvisation based on the user’s behavior towards your application. 

Smart Recommendations

AI-powered features like natural language processing are a widely used smart recommendation strategy. It considers the user’s purchase history pattern, preferences, history, and scrolling habits to give useful recommendations. 

Almost all well-known brands use this AI-based feature in cross-sell and up-sell techniques. If you have an app in the entertainment or shopping category, this AI feature is a must to have to stand out in the crowd. 

Final Thoughts

Various businesses are getting enormous benefits from AI-based mobile applications. And this is just the beginning of this digital revolution. So, the sooner you embrace it, the sooner you will get good results.

Regardless of the mobile app development process, whether it’s hybrid, native, or web app development, AI has endless possibilities and scope.

 

Naveen Kumar is the marketing and product head at JoomDev. This company is based on a web development company, He loves to convert his ideas into reality by developing products to make your online business successful with his mobile app development services.

AI for Customer Service: 5 Easy Ways to Help Your Customers

Replacing humans with robots? Not too long ago this concept struck fear in the hearts of the general public who believed humans would soon be redundant. Luckily, the human species has warmed up to the idea of living side-by-side with cold machines. Compared to antiquated customer service teams staffed by real people, consumers have realized that AI for customer service and voice intelligence (VI) can make their lives far more convenient.

READ: Exploring the Potential of AI Bots in HR — Tips for Leveraging Technology in Employee Communications

AI and VI have, for a while now, been at the epicenter of customer service operations — especially in call center quality assurance. Customers can now enjoy a seamless customer experience, which does not involve being on hold for an hour (or more), thanks to processes such as machine learning, natural language processing, and speech recognition.

These are cost-effective solutions, but, most importantly, AI is seen as a key driver in improving customer satisfaction. If the customer is happy, then your business will be successful. Here are five ways AI and VI can help your business.

24/7 Service

The traditional working routine of 9:00-5:00 is dead. The days of a customer only being able to contact customer support through VoIP phone apps within normal working hours are long gone. One of the problems with humans is that we need to sleep, and paying staff to answer phones 24/7 is expensive. Full online service means that a customer can contact your company whenever they need to.

Also, messaging is now the customer support method of choice. Implementing a system such as a chatbot that can answer a customer’s query at 2 am will help your customer and your brand. 

If yours is a global company operating across different time zones and in different languages, then an AI chat is an essential business communication tool. You can help a Spanish speaker in Seattle at seven in the morning and a Tamil speaker in Texas at ten at night, for example.

Personalization

One of the simplest ways to please someone is to call them by their name — the personal touch. A virtual assistant can call customers by their names and do so much more. They learn from every interaction with the customer and make use of their history to ensure every interaction is customized and personalized. It’s as if you personally know every customer, and you can achieve more in less time. 

In the past, customer service was reactive; it waited until there was a problem and then tried to address the issue. AI has revolutionized the idea of what customer service can be. What about those great series Netflix recommends or that Weekly Mix that Spotify compiles just for you? These are just two excellent examples of AI-powered recommendations facilitating better-continued user experiences.

READ: Improving Your Customer Experience and Boosting Satisfaction — 3 Easy Tips

The more music we listen to on Spotify, the better the recommended music becomes, and our experience of listening to music changes. AI is like the friend we used to have who knew all the great music, except Spotify really knows all the great music. Spotify knows us, and this creates a personal connection between the consumer and the brand. This translates to the customer being happier and more likely to continue consuming the product. 

AI also works for companies selling products other than just entertainment services. With tools such as conversational data analytics, you can extract the necessary data to deliver a personalized service. Travel companies can use AI to learn from their customers’ search histories and then offer specifically targeted packages. One customer might prefer trains over planes, so using this contact center analysis can give the customer travel ideas they never knew existed. 

Personally sending customers content based on their interests also captivates them. The result: an increase in revenue and a happy traveler. 

Efficiency

The call centers of old are clunky, potentially accident-prone and inefficient. It is expensive to pay people to work in them, and they are a waste of time for both your business and your customer.

Call center software, however, such as virtual assistants and chatbots don’t have to put anyone on hold. They can also simultaneously assist a large number of customers and quickly provide them with answers in real-time. Interactions using these methods of AI for customer service reduce the time customers have to spend interacting with the company and solutions are far more long-term, which reduces the need for second contacts.

AI platforms have unlimited memory capacity and use super-fast processors to speedily locate answers without the need for a human to manually search in several different areas before successfully finding a response. This means that machine-learned answers are faster and more accurate than would be possible with a traditional customer service team. 

Predicting Customer Needs

The best way to address a problem is to prevent it from ever becoming a problem — recent developments in collaboration software have helped us with this. Traditional customer service has no way of doing this; however, AI tools are trained to predict a customer’s needs. If, for example, a customer has not moved from a particular webpage in a longer-than-normal time, this may indicate that they are stuck. 

A well-programmed chatbot can appear and both amicably and objectively lend a hand to the confused customer — possibly offering solutions for some of the most common issues that it has identified. The problem will seamlessly be resolved before it has escalated, and your company has provided a solution to a customer who has exerted less effort.

Security

Can you tell me your date of birth and your mother’s maiden name? This is not the first-class security we demand in 2023 — it is susceptible to fraud. However, AI recognition systems on smartphones can automatically identify a customer using face recognition software, making banking and other transactions far more secure. What previously might have taken a customer hours can now be done in seconds.

READ: How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for your Online Business

This technology also gives your customer far more confidence when purchasing your product as there is less chance of error. Choosing the right software will also put customers at ease as they know their personal information will be protected and their privacy safeguarded. 

The Bottom Line

Customers want seamless experiences when contacting your company’s customer service team. They need answers quickly, want interactions to be secure and desire that the time spent talking to your company is kept to a minimum. Using AI and VI, combined with solid QA testing, will ensure that customers are always satisfied. 

Why not take it one step further and use technology to your advantage? Harbor the power of AI to learn more about your customer: their likes, their personality, and their history. Give them more of what they want and then sit back and watch your customer smile and your profits grow.

 

Grace Lau 1Grace Lau is the Director of Growth Content at Dialpad, an AI-powered cloud communication platform for better and easier team collaboration. She has over 10 years of experience in content writing and strategy. Currently, she is responsible for leading branded and editorial content strategies, partnering with SEO and Ops teams to build and nurture content. Here is her LinkedIn.

AI in Insurance: How New Technologies are Changing the Game

Artificial intelligence application in the insurance sector is not necessarily a novel idea. Yet due to recent technological developments, many insurers now have the capability to more fully utilize AI in the insurance sectors to transform their business. 

Current state and use of AI/technology in insurance

For many years, insurers have used statistical models and data analytics to forecast and evaluate risk. These conventional data solutions for insurance providers do have certain drawbacks, though. They take a lot of time, they’re expensive and they’re prone to mistakes. Also, they frequently draw on previous data, which may not be a good indicator of what will happen in the future.

By enabling insurers to make data-driven choices in real-time, artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to revolutionize the insurance sector as well as several other industries. Massive volumes of data from many sources, such as social media, IoT devices and other unstructured data, may be analyzed by AI-powered systems.

As data is a core component of virtually every business in every industry, these effects will be unquestionably impactful. Specific to the world of insurance; underwriting, claims processing, fraud detection and customer service may all be made better with the use of such data tools.

READ: AI in Employment — A Troubling Issue in the Hiring Process

How new AI technologies will impact and change insurance?

The act of evaluating a potential policyholder’s risk and establishing the proper premium is known as underwriting. Conventional underwriting practices sometimes rely on insufficient or out-of-date data, which can result in erroneous risk evaluations and increased client rates. By examining a wider variety of data sources, such as social media, credit scores and driving behaviors, AI-powered underwriting can assist insurers in producing more accurate risk assessments. Moreover, AI has the potential to automate the underwriting procedure, speeding up the policy issuance process and enhancing client satisfaction.

Another area where AI can have a big influence is in claims processing. The typical claims processing methodology is frequently labor-intensive, error-prone and manual. By automatically checking claims, spotting possible fraud and sorting claims according to severity, AI-powered claims processing systems can speed up the process. This increase in the resolution of claims will surely increase client satisfaction.

For insurers, fraud is a major issue that costs them billions of dollars annually. The majority of the time, traditional fraud detection techniques are reactive and rely on post-incident investigation to determine fraud. Systems for detecting insurance fraud that are driven by AI may be proactive and analyze trends and anomalies in real-time to find probable fraud before it happens. By avoiding the payment of bogus claims, this can save insurers time and money.

READ: Combatting E-commerce Fraud: Best Practices for Fraud Prevention in Online Sales

In the insurance sector, AI may also enhance customer service and satisfaction. Customers may get immediate responses to their questions and concerns through chatbots, virtual assistants and other AI-powered solutions. Moreover, AI may assist insurers in tailoring their offerings to each client’s particular demands, increasing client satisfaction and loyalty.

Potential challenges

Although AI has the potential to completely transform the insurance sector, there are still a number of issues that insurers must deal with. Privacy and cybersecurity challenges are among the biggest difficulties. The proper and moral collection and use of consumer data is the responsibility of insurers.

Moreover, they need to safeguard client data from potential hacks and security holes. Potential effects on employment present yet another difficulty. Several jobs that are now carried out by human personnel might potentially be automated by AI-powered technologies. This may result in cost savings for insurers, but it might also cost people their jobs. Insurance companies need to find a method to combine AI’s advantages with any possible effects on employment.

READ: How to Minimize Cybersecurity Risks and Balance Customer Friction for your Online Business

The bottom line

As has been shown, artificial intelligence and other emerging technologies have the potential to drastically alter the insurance sector in ways that we do not yet completely comprehend. Although there are certain issues that need to be resolved, AI has a lot to offer customers and insurers. Insurance companies may improve the product suites, operations and customer service by utilizing AI and other cutting-edge technology. We can anticipate many more cutting-edge applications of AI as the insurance sector develops, which will certainly have a massive impact on the sector’s future.

 

Ben HartwigBen is a Web Operations Executive at InfoTracer who takes a wide view from the whole system. He authors guides on entire security posture, both physical and cyber.

The Best Modern HR Strategies: Navigating Challenges and Embracing Opportunities

In recent years, HR strategies have drastically changed. From compliance regulations, COVID-19 and the shift toward remote work — as well as an increased focus on the employee experience — HR departments have been forced to constantly evolve. As the state of HR’s complexity increases, there are ways HR leaders can turn these challenges into opportunities.

READ: Veteran Unemployment — Untapped Workplace Resources

Workplace landscape 

One of the biggest changes the HR industry is dealing with today is adapting to the rapidly changing landscape of the workplace. The pandemic accelerated the movement toward remote work, and HR professionals have been tasked with managing a workforce that functions across different locations and time zones. This has required leaders to revise their HR strategies, putting additional emphasis on employee engagement, productivity and performance, while ensuring compliance in all municipalities and states.

Artificial intelligence (AI)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been on the rise and it has the potential to quickly change HR, recruiting and many other jobs across the board. While AI already has made a substantial impact on the HR profession by lightening the load of some administrative tasks, such as job descriptions and handbooks, it cannot replace the human aspects of positions, such as strategy and creativity.

HR professionals will be at the forefront of balancing the use of AI as a tool through policies and guidelines, for their own departments and overall organizations, but also, they will need to ensure human creativity and ingenuity is not lost with machine learning.

READ: Exploring the Potential of AI Bots in HR

Compliance

The constant in the HR industry over the past three years has been change, and it does not show signs of stopping.

Agile HR teams have managed fluctuating regulations and compliance requirements throughout the pandemic. Now, the federal and state employment laws and regulations, as well as changes to healthcare policies, benefits and workplace safety, continue to change.

Municipalities are passing pay transparency laws, companies with employees across the country must be compliant with each regulation and overtime requirements are constantly in flux. Staying informed on these ever-changing regulations can be a time-consuming and complex task but it is essential for HR professionals to keep businesses compliant. 

Labor

There is a juxtaposition among key verticals. Industries that experienced exponential growth during the pandemic, such as the tech industry, are downsizing their workforce. However, other industries are still experiencing a labor shortage. HR professionals today are working with the C-suite to either determine layoff alternatives or develop strategies to find candidates with alternative credentials to fill growing needs. Recruitment and retention strategies are top of mind for HR strategists today who want to keep employees happy who either remain with an organization post-layoff or within organizations that continue to struggle to find viable new hires. 

READ: How Colorado Can Make “The Great Reset” a Reality for a Disrupted Talent Pipeline

Opportunities for success

Despite these challenges, there are several opportunities for success.

First and foremost, HR professionals must continue to be adaptable and willing to embrace change. What holds true in HR today is prioritizing the employee experience and maximizing its power to create a positive work culture. Leaders should consider developing initiatives that target flexible work policies and procedures, wellness programs, career development and new strategies for communication and collaboration across different time zones. These efforts can result in a more engaged and satisfied workforce, which increases retention, but it also positively impacts the organization’s bottom line.

The bottom line

HR departments are the backbone of every organization. The current state of HR will continue to be dynamic and evolve as businesses adapt to numerous economic, social and technological trends. What is paramount for HR professionals is staying abreast of these changes and being strategic in the guidance they provide leadership. This guidance will help the business take care of its people, who are critical to its success. 

 

Niki JorgensenNiki Jorgensen is a director of service operations for Insperity, a leading provider of human resources and business performance solutions. For more information about Insperity, call 800-465-3800 or visit www.insperity.com.

Exploring the Potential of AI Bots in HR — Tips for Leveraging Technology in Employee Communications

Artificial Intelligence (AI) bots have taken over the Internet. Beginning with the launch of ChatGPT from Microsoft, many professionals have explored the tool’s capabilities – which has HR leaders wondering about the applications of AI bots in their field.

With AI bots capable of composing emails and even lengthy articles, HR leaders can rely on them to generate first drafts of employee communications; however, they should keep a few key factors in mind.

READ: AI in Employment — A Troubling Issue in the Hiring Process

Leverage AI as a tool

Like any other technology, AI bots should be viewed as a tool that can make the jobs of HR leaders easier. In the past several decades, technology has revolutionized employees’ daily work lives many times over with computers, personal laptops, cloud-based systems, smart phones and more. The transition to each of these technologies involved a great deal of planning and, in many cases, hesitations from workers accustomed to the old way of doing things.

While it is impossible to predict the future of AI bots and HR, HR leaders should remember AI is yet another tool at their disposal. The impact of AI bots on HR will depend on how HR teams choose to use it.

There are many small ways that an AI bot could save time for HR leaders to focus on a task that requires a human touch. For example, when HR needs to focus on conflict resolution or teambuilding, which cannot be outsourced to AI bots, they can ask AI to generate the first draft of a job posting to attract qualified candidates. 

Develop a coherent and coordinated policy

Keep in mind, nearly every office worker will have the opportunity to use AI bots for some portion of their tasks. In some cases, workers may begin using AI bots to lighten their load without ever raising the subject with a manager. It is important for teams to discuss how they plan to use AI bots, not only to avoid pitfalls but to share best practices for improving efficiency. With productivity on the decrease in the past several years, AI bots could be one tool to halt the slowdown.  

READ: How to resist distraction and boost productivity

Even within the same teams, policies on AI bots may differ depending on what kind of work an employee is producing. For instance, HR departments may approve AI-generated internal communications but feel reluctant toward allowing employees to use AI bots for client-facing emails or public social media posts. It is important for organizations to establish the ground rules of AI use within the policy, such as when it is acceptable for use, how the content generated should be edited and outline the review process.  

Don’t lose the personal touch

HR leaders need to think about the right times to use AI bots – but also, the wrong times. Any discussion of a sensitive or personal subject should raise a red flag on the use of an AI bot to generate communications.

Even if the recipient of an email cannot tell it was written by an AI bot, they may feel differently once they find out the true author. That is often doubly true for emails and communications around sensitive subjects, such as the loss of a coworker, a round of layoffs or a national or local emergency. Using AI bots to write those types of messages can also turn into a PR disaster.

Employees take messages on sensitive matters to heart and may feel hurt, angry and even disrespected when they learn HR leaders passed off the words of an AI as their own, instead of thoughtfully engaging with the topic. It could be risky to generate a first draft of sensitive communication, even if substantial edits are made.

That applies not only to serious situations but also to moments for celebration, like a job offer or promotion. Write these communications without relying on an AI bot, or at minimum, use AI bot-generated copy in these situations as loose inspiration instead of a first draft. For now, employees are still growing comfortable with the use of AI, so the better choice is to write highly personal messages from scratch.

By thinking carefully about how they engage with ChatGPT and other AI bots, HR professionals can navigate this new technological territory with ease.

 

Sarah Grimstead HeadshotSarah Grimstead is a regional vice president with Insperity, a leading provider of human resources offering the most comprehensive suite of scalable HR solutions available in the marketplace. For more information about Insperity, call 800-465-3800 or visit www.insperity.com.  

AI in Employment — A Troubling Issue in the Hiring Process

After the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission recently indicated it intends to increase scrutiny over employers’ use of AI in employment, recruitment, hiring and disciplinary decisions, employers are well advised to do the same. Automation in employment decisions usually goes one of two ways — it mitigates or increases bias.

With 99% of Fortune 500 firms and 25% of small companies using some form of AI in their employment processes, employers of all sizes now face legal exposure that did not previously exist. 

READ: Artificial Intelligence and Automation in the Workplace

In its most recent public hearing, the EEOC hosted expert witness testimony on how AI may affect employer liability under the Americans With Disabilities Act, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Age Discrimination in Employment Act, among other civil rights laws. The hearing comes on the heels of the EEOC’s announcement that its enforcement priorities for 2023-2027 include AI in employment. This priority is unsurprising, considering the EEOC recently sued three companies for using online recruitment software that allegedly automatically rejected otherwise qualified candidates because of their age and gender. In that same month, the EEOC issued guidance on how AI can exclude disabled workers. 

The potential implications of “AI in employment” are vast, but below are a few practices that, according to recent guidance, are likely to place employers in the EEOC’s crosshairs. 

Implicit bias in — disparate impact out

“Facially neutral” criteria can operate to exclude certain protected classes. When neutral policies/criteria disparately impacts employees of a protected class, the risk for a legally viable claim is high. Here are a few EEOC-provided examples of how this plays out in the AI sphere.

Many employers regard gaps in employment as a “red flag” and could ask AI to de-prioritize applicants with gaps. The result would likely exclude women (due to parental leave) and individuals with disabilities. 

READ: Veteran Unemployment: Untapped Workplace Resources

An employer could ask AI to prioritize workers in the ZIP codes near the work site. However, because of redlining, the employer may unintentionally exclude applicants whose families were historically forced to reside in other ZIP codes due to their race.

Personality tests have grown in popularity, but if an employer asks AI to exclude applicants who do not “exhibit optimism,” the test could screen out an otherwise qualified applicant with Major Depressive Disorder, which would violate the ADA. 

The AI as “decisionmaker” may be no defense in light of user preference adaptation.

Human intervention is not a cure-all, and machine learning could institutionalize existing practices. Here are a few examples.

If an employer identifies a group of “good” employees and seeks to hire individuals who display the same traits, automated machine learning and user preference adaptation may result in outcome replication. Employers will end up with workforces identical to their current ones, which could stifle innovation brought by new perspectives and perpetuate the underrepresentation of traditionally underrepresented groups and give rise to legal liability.

If an HR representative reviews applications and gives the “thumbs up” or “thumbs down” rating, the machine will learn and adapt to meet that HR representative’s preferences. However, the EEOC’s focus on the role unconscious bias plays in most of these assessments, backed by the well-established fact that humans tend to prefer people who are “like” them, means that AI’s “learned” preferences opens the door to legal liability. 

READ: How Business Leaders Can Embrace a Multigenerational Workforce 

While the use of AI itself will not get an employer in trouble, the EEOC has made clear that it is incumbent upon employers to educate themselves on the risks and benefits of such use and the potential processes and outcomes tied to it. “AI made me do it” will not be an effective defense. Employers should be prepared for increased scrutiny if they use AI, as the EEOC has indicated it is considering workplace audits for such companies, like those used in pay equity, as part of its “crackdown” on the unintended consequences of AI use. 

To say that AI and automated machine learning in employment is a nuanced topic is, quite frankly, an understatement. Technological advancement is ever-evolving, and the EEOC guidance likely will lag far behind innovation. However, there can be no doubt that employers who use AI may attract the attention of the EEOC. Employers need to ensure they stay proactive to detect insidious legal risks, lest they find themselves the “test case” to develop new laws. One of the best ways to stay ahead of the curve is to speak with experienced Labor & Employment counsel.

Davis CarissaReagan MelissaCarissa Davis, an associate in the Labor & Employment department, provides all-inclusive services involving federal and state anti-discrimination law, wage and hour law, and labor disputes and negotiations.

Melissa Reagan is a member in Sherman & Howard’s Trial department, where she is a member of the firm’s Data Security and Privacy group. 

 

AI is Changing Urban Forestry

What comes to mind when you hear the word infrastructure? Roads, bridges, maybe power lines and storm drains?

Add to that list — the trees lining the street and shading your favorite parks.

These trees, collectively known as the “urban forest,” also provide essential infrastructural services. They mitigate stormwater, cool air temperatures, improve air quality, and enhance the livability of communities. The urban forest canopy is becoming increasingly important as global populations urbanize and climate change intensifies.

Yet, over the years an upwards of over 20 million trees were lost every year in U.S. cities from development and climate change to lack of care and labor shortages. The urban forest requires continuous upkeep, just like any infrastructure, to continue providing benefits to the communities around them.

Cities can now measure their tree canopy coverage in a couple of days instead of a couple months.

Combating Canopy Loss With Technology

This is the domain of PlanIT Geo, an Arvada-based tech company that developed a suite of software applications to simplify and improve urban forest management. The company made a name for itself first in consulting and then by creating leading-edge software for urban foresters.

Skyline Of Denver Downtown With Rocky Mountains

The company’s latest innovation is looking to tree canopy analysis — where satellite imagery and geographic data are used to map out the distribution of trees in a defined area. It provides foresters with a big-picture view of the quantity and location of their trees and helps guide where new trees should be planted.

Historically, a tree canopy analysis is a lengthy process, requiring contracting a specialized company, lots of meetings, and special budgeting to absorb the large cost every 5-10 years. A response by PlanIT Geo was to partner with EarthDefine out of Redmond, Washington, in using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to offer dramatically faster and less expensive canopy analysis.

More Accessible Data Means Better Managed Trees

Nowadays, there is no longer a need for staff utilizing Geographic Information Systems (GIS) to analyze or scope a tree canopy study — the work is already done by AI. Cities can now measure their tree canopy coverage in a couple of days instead of a couple months. And, since it is on an annual subscription model, the cost is flatlined into more manageable payments.

This has opened the door for smaller urban forestry programs to get data previously only pursued by larger cities. For example, locally in the Grand Valley, it was unlikely Grand Junction’s forestry department would have been able to purchase a traditional canopy analysis. This new offering was accessible for their budget and the forestry department can now back up budget discussions with city leadership with hard numbers about the value of their trees.

Through partnerships and AI analysis, it is now easier more than ever to use and share information on changes in urban tree canopy. More communities are going to be able to track the health of their urban forests and work towards more equitable distribution of their trees. This latest tech innovation for canopy assessment equates to better understood urban forests, which leads to better management, and therefore more resilient and livable communities.

 

Alec SabatiniAlec Sabatini is a writer and editor at PlanIT Geo, a global urban forestry consulting and software development firm, where he creates educational content at the intersection of trees and technology. To learn more about the latest in innovative urban forestry, visit: PlanIT Geo.