From the course: Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders

AI automated decision-making

From the course: Artificial Intelligence for Business Leaders

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AI automated decision-making

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- Imagine that you're flying to a friend's graduation party. You're a loyal customer, so you fly the same airline. When you arrive at the airport, you start to worry. You see people gathering in front of monitors. It turns out that your flight has been canceled due to bad weather. Almost immediately, you get a text on your phone. It turns out that you've been booked on the next flight. You also get a smart code with a coupon for a restaurant. Now, all of this is happening instantaneously. It had very little human intervention, and it's all because your airline uses something called automated decision-making. Remember that AI systems do well when they have access to tremendous amounts of data. Using that data, the airline can build a system that makes instant decisions. It can do this in a fraction of the time that it would take a human customer service agent. The automated decision-making system probably evaluated your customer loyalty. That way it could figure out who to book first on the next flight. Then it did some probability analysis to determine the likelihood your new flight was departing on time. For that, it might use data sources from the National Weather Service. It might even look at historical trends of similar flights from the same airport. Finally, it created coupons based on the probability that you'd get something to eat before your next flight. It might get this data from your airline credit card. This AI system uses a combination of statistical techniques. One of the most important is real-time data gathering. The system uses real-time data about the weather, the airport, and the flight status of arriving airplanes. It also takes into account whether this is your home city, or if you're connecting to a different flight. The system might also use trend analysis. It considers questions like how long does it take for the airport to clear out? How many people go to the restaurants? How often do you travel? And how will this impact your future buying decisions? This system uses both data and trend analysis to forecast different outcomes. What's the likelihood that you'll arrive close to your original arrival time? What's the likelihood that your flight will take off without any further delay? Remember that the AI system sees this as a data challenge. Then it looks for patterns so it can better predict future outcomes. In many ways, that makes the system uniquely qualified to make real-time decisions. A human customer service agent might be friendlier, but it would be nearly impossible for them to weigh all these different statistical outcomes. So it would be harder for them to come up with a solution that has the highest probability of success. AI systems can also do automated decision-making to help solve all kinds of business logistics challenges. It's not just airlines that benefit from this type of real-time decision making.

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