Should Consumers Trust AI with High-Stakes Decisions?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is slowly seeping into every aspect of technology. From smart speakers to chatbots, and analytics to automation, AI is becoming the new standard in digital applications and interactions. In fact, the growth of the global AI market in 2019 rose to 154%, and by 2021 it’s predicted that 80% of emerging technologies will have AI foundations. Technology is becoming more advanced with AI as a staple. But there are also concerns about AI. In creating super intelligent technology, there’s the fear that the application’s intellect will supersede the user’s desires. There’s also the fear that one’s personal and private information could fall into the wrong hands. The future of artificial intelligence depends on trust. With all this in mind, should consumers trust AI with high-stakes decisions?

Don’t worry, you can save your answer for the comments section after you’ve read all the facts below.

How AI Improves Our Lives

Artificial intelligence has vastly improved our digital experiences and has impacted our everyday lives. Whether you realize it or not, AI is all around us. Take your social media platforms, for example. How do you think those apps are able to curate such wonderfully engaging content on your feed? Hint: it’s through the use of machine learning and artificial intelligence. The more you like, comment, share, and save posts, the more the app can predict what kind of images and videos you’ll interact with. This is why cat memes keep appearing on your timeline, and why you see so many home cooking tutorials. The AI aims to improve your user experience on the site with posts you’re interested in.

Similarly, if you have a smart device in your house like a Google Home or Amazon Echo, these devices are also powered by AI. AI reliability is so high because of the accuracy of these products. The ability for those devices to comprehend voice commands and act upon them or conduct voice searches and produce results for you is all a product of artificial intelligence. AI has helped improve our lives greatly with convenience and seamless user experiences.

While the above two examples are well and good for your everyday life, artificial intelligence is also working to improve medicine as well. For instance, AI and machine learning algorithms are helping to analyze graphs and detect abnormal growths. But according to Daniel Greenfield of Harvard University, there’s also a problem with AI in medicine:

With misleading data, the algorithms can give misleading results. It is quite possible that individuals creating an algorithm might not know that the data they feed is misleading until it is too late, and their algorithm has caused medical malpractice. This error can be avoided by both clinicians and programmers being well informed about the data and methods needed to use data correctly in the algorithm. By establishing relationships between clinicians that understand the specifics of the clinical data and the computationalists creating the algorithms, it’ll be less likely for an algorithm to learn to make incorrect choices.

Currently, artificial intelligence is still only in its infancy, which means it’s prone to errors like the one noted above in medicine and across all fields. This discrepancy is one of the main reasons why not to trust AI, but as technology becomes more sophisticated, developers and users will figure out ways to address these issues.

5 Benefits of AI in Decision Making and Consumer Thought

Artificial intelligence isn’t just beneficial for users; it also has many benefits for businesses. AI has the ability to help business owners make the right decisions for their brand. From creating an effortless workflow to analyzing big data groups, these are the five benefits of AI in decision making:

1. Automation: AI
   empowers your employees by providing them with operational excellence.
   When mundane, time-consuming tasks are automated, it gives your team more
   freedom to focus on your customers. Business decisions pass through
   multiple different levels of a company. When your front-line workers have
   more bandwidth to dedicate to your target audience, you’ll have more
   primary data from your employees.
2. Data
   Analysis: Artificial intelligence has the ability to
   compile, analyze, and report on large data sets. What would have
   previously taken the work of several data scientists can now be
   accomplished with one. When business owners have access to all the facts
   and figures, they can make data driven decisions through AI trust and transparency.
3. Accuracy: As we
   saw above from Mr. Greenfield of Harvard University, the accuracy of AI
   depends on human input. Thankfully, when human input is correct, the results
   from AI-powered tools are tremendous. The accuracy of these technologies
   can help business leaders make decisions because of the reliability of the
   data. The future of artificial
   intelligence depends on trust, and when AI predicts accurately, it helps give business executives
   the confidence they need to make the correct decision for their
   brand.
4. Predictions: In
   addition to the above—providing the correct initial data—AI can generate
   predictions based on trends within your data. Predictions will also help
   users because artificial intelligence drives customer experiences with accurate predictions. This will help
   business decisions because AI can literally show you what the outcome of
   each option could be.
5. Reduced
   Costs: When tasks are automated, when data is easily
   accessible and users have the ability to interpret that data, and when
   predictions are correct, artificial intelligence can reduce your operating
   costs dramatically. This also helps business leaders make decisions
   because they can reallocate their budget based on their needs.

According to a global study done by Pega, when asked the question, “do you think you would be more open to using more AI if it helped you in your daily life (for example, saving you time or money)?” 62% of users said yes! The unfortunate truth of the matter is that 28% of global users still don’t know or are unsure of what artificial intelligence actually is. Furthermore, the study showed an overwhelming desire from users to have a “strong preference for human interaction.” While AI does have many benefits, users are still overwhelmingly unsure as to what it is, how it could benefit them, and its use over human interactions.

Vendors and Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is still flawed in many ways. We saw earlier how, when fed the wrong information, AI can arrive at misleading conclusions. In addition, AI and its algorithms can also misidentify information with algorithm bias. According to Forbes, “if the bias lurking in the algorithms that make vital decisions goes unrecognized, it could lead to unethical and unfair consequences.” Regarding AI becoming the future of technology and building trust in AI, vendors have largely been unable to keep up with their own promises or find solutions to these current issues. With this knowledge, it is in the best interest of your brand to provide full disclosure to your team and your consumers and express the challenges of working with and using AI. When used ethically and monitored appropriately, the benefits of AI can be overwhelming. But the key here is to recognize that artificial intelligence is still reliant on human input.

Key Takeaways

With all of its benefits and capabilities, should consumers trust AI with high stakes decisions? For many, trusting AI and its predictions seems like a great thing to do. For others, its advice should always come with a grain of salt. Before you make your final decision as to whether or not to trust AI, here are the key takeaways one more time:

• From apps to devices and platforms, AI is integrated into many parts of our lives and is all around us
• Artificial intelligence is not perfect and is prone to errors when fed misinformation
• There are many benefits to using AI, such as automation where mundane tasks are taken care of and your employees are able give more focus to your customers
• AI has the ability to compile, analyze, and report on large data sets, which allows your team to make data-driven decisions
• When correct data is used, AI provides business executives with the confidence they need to make important business decisions
• Helping drive customer experiences, AI can generate predictions that will speak to different departments in your company
• AI also helps reduce operating costs and frees up your cash flow to be allocated to other areas of your business
• There’s still a strong desire for human interaction from users across the globe
• AI isn’t perfect and vendors need to be transparent about what these systems can and cannot accomplish to keep everyone on the same page

The
future of artificial intelligence depends on trust. Now that you finally understand the current state of
artificial intelligence, would you trust AI with high stakes business
decisions? Let us know in the comments below!