Demystifying AI – Baird’s “An AI State of Mind”
How AI is helping companies build better product, become more efficient and meet evolving customer needs
AI has immense potential to transform businesses and create significant value for users, customers and employees. Fueled by increased computing power and availability of comprehensive datasets, AI is quickly advancing. Companies who embrace this newfound potential with an AI State of Mind, using full automation or in conjunction with humans, stand to gain meaningful competitive advantages.
In this new report, An AI State of Mind, Baird Global Investment Banking has partnered with Dr. Yves-Alexandre de Montjoye, from the Department of Computing at Imperial College London commissioned via Imperial Consultants, to detail how nine companies are using AI in their businesses to improve performance and better serve their customers.
Scalability
Rendering tasks that would take many humans thousands of hours to be completed in less time with fewer hands
Efficiency Gains
Few jobs are at risk of being replaced by AI, rather, it helps employees be more productive and makes work more interesting
Improving Quality
Machines don’t tire, helping humans to continuously check every single detail and reduce instance of errors
New Insights
Turning data into information and uncovering beneficial insights for both their business and their clients
Human-in-the-Loop
Nearly all companies we spoke with subscribe to the idea of keeping human oversight and control over decisions made by algorithms.
Importance of Quality Data
Performance of AI models is largely a function of quality of data and labels that the model relies to learn from.
Popular AI Techniques
Given the importance of text, it was no surprise that Natural Language Processing (NLP) was the most popular technique set amongst the companies we spoke to.
Thanks to the availability of pre-trained models, AI is being democratized, with more companies adopting AI outside the traditional realm of technology players. Companies are also maturing in their deployment of Al, with tech and business teams working more closely together. Looking ahead, the companies we talked to planned to invest more in Al to reach ambitious new medium- and long-term goals.
Regulation of Al is also imminent, starting with the EU Al Act. Companies we spoke to recognize the risk of potential bias being built into AI systems that were left unregulated. Equally, they were conscious of potential short-term challenges and barriers to entry that regulation may bring. However, longer term they believe this the benefits of regulation outweigh, with the potential to help build trust in Al and expedite its adoption and deployment.
Thank You to Our Participating Companies
Get Ahead of the AI Revolution
Al is already a crucial part of how many businesses operate. From the great “democratization of Al” to the rise of self-supervised machine learning techniques, all of this points to the imminent positive force that AI will have across most industries and functions. Current AI excels at working alongside humans – automating boring repetitive tasks, instead making work more interesting and allow us to focus on tougher tasks.
Industry leaders are already deploying Al solutions to increase efficiency so they and their clients can focus on their core competencies. Continued support from the C-suite for AI projects combining short- and medium-term goals with a long-term vision of how AI will impact the industry are key to an AI state of mind and to reap the benefits of the AI revolution.
Contact Members of the Baird Team to Learn More
Baird’s Technology & Services team combines global capital markets capabilities with extensive industry knowledge to offer leading M&A advisory and capital-raising services. Deep sector-specific domain expertise enables our Technology & Services team to offer insightful, value-added advisory services to middle-market clients seeking to raise capital or consider strategic alternatives.
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