Since its emergence, artificial intelligence (AI) has crept into technology, changing everything we know about computers. Artificial intelligence refers to the programming of computers to think like humans. If you have ever used an automated program, there's every possibility that it was AI in action. Interestingly, the workplace structure is not exempted from its influence. Although hazy, AI has greatly impacted your work without you realizing it.

The Conversational AI space has made great strides in the underlying technologies, use cases, and adoption. We are moving past the days of basic question and answer experiences and simple decision trees. Chatbots, voice assistants, and Interactive Voice Response (IVR) solutions have advanced to incorporate sophisticated Natural Language Understanding (NLU) that not only understands a user's Intent, but enables the chatbot to respond appropriately in a way that satisfies the user. Conversational AI solutions are used across a wide variety of use cases and industries -- including customer service, appointment booking, triaging medical symptoms, signing up for an account, and more. The demand for conversational AI continues to grow as users prefer to communicate over digital channels. Businesses are developing chatbots, voice assistant, and IVR experiences to increase customer satisfaction, reduce operational costs, and achieve business goals.

Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning have become far more effective and matured in recent years, thanks to rapid advancements in artificial intelligence and cutting-edge technologies. AI/ML systems are amazing learners because they are constantly improving and becoming smarter than humans, allowing them to make predictions with little or no human intervention. With the growing adoption of AI, IDC's latest forecast on AI market's worldwide revenues, which includes software, hardware, and services are estimated to grow 16.4% year over year in 2021 to $327.5 billion. However, nothing in this world is perfect and has unintended consequences. The power of such technologies can be easily abused or exploited.

New research published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association found that chatbots and other conversational agents can be used to provide up-to-date facts about COVID-19. Researchers from IBM Watson Health and Vanderbilt University Medical Center explored the ways governmental agencies, employers, provider organizations and health plans used the Watson Assistant platform to deliver COVID-19-related information to users. "Given the enormous demand for information about COVID-19, many stakeholders have leveraged emerging conversational technologies to automate responses to common COVID-19 related questions and information needs specific to their organizations," wrote the team. As the researchers noted, chatbots have been used in healthcare to aid in performing specific tasks, determining social needs, and prompting behavior change. But in response to the rapidly evolving information – and disinformation – landscape around the novel coronavirus throughout 2020, many organizations turned to natural language processing tools as part of public-awareness strategies.

In a far-reaching and candid interview after IBM's #THINK2020 digital event, Rob and I discussed his insights into what's happening with AI in the enterprise and where the biggest long-term impacts will be. Editorial comments are set off by square brackets [such as these.] There's one word that describes what I'm seeking here: insight. I am seeking your insights. I've looked at your blog posts and reviews of your books. You have insights I want to share with all The Analyst Syndicate's readers. Let's start with insights on business model disruption in particular industries.

Financial services companies are investing in voice and chat conversational technologies -- but can they really drive engagement and streamline customer communications? Catch up on this VB Live event to learn how Capital One and others are leveraging these technologies to create meaningful customer experiences. Consumer enthusiasm around digital assistants like Amazon Echo and Google Home sparked a run on investment in the financial services world. Financial institutions have been going all in on conversational technologies such as voice and chat in banking. "There's the near-term focus that a lot of folks gravitate to: How can we rip costs out of the system by having people interact with automation and AI instead of a human?" says Ken Dodelin, VP conversational AI products at Capital One.

An entire generation of kids are growing up in an age where conversational technology is the norm, and this will have major implications for the future. When my mother sees me using a smart speaker, even for mundane use cases like turning on the living room light, a flash of surprise comes across her face. She can't believe that conversational computing is a thing, despite the fact that I work in the field and many of her Boomer friends are avid voice users. But when my two-year-old daughter sees me casually speak with inanimate objects--which appear to understand me, talk back and do my bidding--she's not impressed. It's perfectly normal to her, far more normal than seeing me use that strange rectangular contraption with dozens of buttons that controls what's on that big screen on the wall.

The race is on to support conversational technologies and make AI virtual assistants that we trust to do things for us, said Julie Ask, principal analyst at Forrester Research, during a keynote presentation at the research firm's recent New Tech Forum in Boston. Looking to establish accountability across disparate project teams? Trying to automate processes or allow for lean methodology support? Hoping to enable business consequence modeling or real-time reporting? If you answered'yes' to any of these questions, then you need to download this comprehensive, 68-page PDF guide on selecting, managing, and tracking IT projects for superior service delivery.

It's hard to believe, but 2017 is coming to a close and 2018 is right around the corner. Like most companies, Aiden.ai is in the middle of planning and prioritising for the new year. We have some big and exciting things in the works! But we also wanted to share our predictions for 2018. As artificial intelligence continues to disrupt multiple industries in a big way -- we think next year is going to be really transformative.

Many, perhaps most, online businesses now offer "live chat" as a customer service option. Rather than calling or emailing with your support questions, live chat means you can speak to a customer service rep via instant messaging. This option is convenient and easy, and customers like it: live chat has the highest reported satisfaction rating (73%) of any customer service channel. It's part of a wider trend known as conversational commerce that's set to transform the world of digital commerce in the years to come. The term "conversational commerce" was popularized by Chris Messina, then of Uber, in a 2015 post on Medium.com