In recent years, scientists have made huge advancements in artificial intelligence.
Some people associate AI with science fiction robots, but in reality, the technology streamlines and improves many day-to-day processes, allowing us to accomplish more in less time.
Today, AI plays a role in many aspects of our daily lives, from commuting to shopping to browsing the web. AI software development is a massive market, and the technology is improving all the time. Here are five ways AI impacts your everyday life:
Social Media
Experts predict that the AI social media market will grow from $633 million in 2018 to $2.1 billion in 2023. As both artificial intelligence and social media become more prevalent in people’s lives, the intersection of the two will also become more popular.
Social media networks utilize AI to advertise more effectively to users. Most social networks allow marketers to run massive paid ad campaigns, and without AI, marketers spend lots of money creating and distributing content for each campaign. However, artificial intelligence technology can write creative social media ads on its own. These ads are optimized to generate clicks and conversions, and they can even include shortened links and hashtags.
Social media sites also rely on AI to improve user experience. For example, Facebook uses machine learning to recognize users’ faces in photos and to provide users with personalized content. Snapchat uses AI technology to overlay filters that move in sync with users’ faces. LinkedIn uses AI to give job recommendations and suggest contacts to their users.
Digital Assistants
Digital assistants like the Google Home and Amazon Alexa have exploded in popularity in the last few years. You can use digital assistants for a wide variety of purposes, but the following are some of the most common uses:
- Message dictation
- Internet searches
- Alarms and timers
- Scheduling
- Reminders
- Media playback
- Calculations
Some digital assistants also offer home automation, which allows you to use the technology to control your thermostat, lights, garage door, and other devices
Many digital assistants use AI to understand the nuances of human language. This allows the devices to process full sentences spoken by the user and respond with natural speech. The natural language abilities will get better and better over time until digital assistants sound just like humans.
AI and machine learning also help digital assistants improve themselves without needing human interference. For example, if an iPhone user tells Siri that it made a mistake in responding to a request, it will learn from that data to avoid repeating the error. It doesn’t need to be reprogrammed by a human to correct the mistake.
Web Searches
Most people use search engines multiple times every day. Search engines have existed since the 1990s, but artificial intelligence has recently started to transform the web searching experience.
One of the biggest uses of AI in search engines is to create ranking algorithms. While there is still plenty of human effort involved in creating and adjusting these algorithms, many search engines also use AI to improve them. This affects the results you see on the first page of a web search as well as the order the results appear in.
Artificial intelligence is also an important factor in quality control. Marketers are always trying to increase their websites’ search rankings, and some people try to use questionable practices like keyword stuffing and invisible text to bump their sites to the top. Today, search engines use AI to find and penalize sites that use these practices, so your top search results aren’t contaminated with poor-quality pages.
Online Stores and Services
If you ever shop online, there’s a good chance that artificial intelligence has been a part of your e-commerce experience. AI plays a role in digital assistant technology, web searches, and social media advertising, which are all major components of online shopping. If you see an ad on Facebook for a product you’ve been Googling, it’s likely that AI was involved at some point in the process.
Another important function of AI in online shopping is chatbots, which are typically available 24/7 to answer questions and offer solutions to common problems. Although chatbots aren’t always as helpful as speaking to a human representative, they can offer quick assistance for easy issues.
AI can also help to personalize your shopping experience by gathering your user information and third party data. If an e-commerce store gives you a great product recommendation after your initial purchase, they may have used artificial intelligence to figure out what else you’d be interested in buying.
Music Recommendations
Every day, artists upload tens of thousands of new tracks to music streaming services like Spotify. Artificial intelligence plays a key role in sorting through all of these tracks and providing users with recommendations based on their listening history. For example, Spotify uses machine learning for its Discover Weekly service, which provides users with customized playlists of new music every Monday. This helps users easily find new songs and artists, and it helps small artists get more exposure.
Spotify also uses AI for natural language processing, which analyzes human speech. Artificial intelligence can search for news articles, blog posts, and other discussions on songs or artists. Then, it analyzes the descriptive phrases the speakers use. With this information, the AI understands how different people feel about music and musicians, so it can offer good recommendations.
Conclusion: AI Is Now a Part of Everyday Life
Even if it’s not obvious, artificial intelligence is probably a part of your daily life in a number of ways. If you see a targeted ad on social media, it might have been generated by AI. When you ask your digital assistant a question, AI allows the technology to search the web and find the most helpful answer. Your product recommendations when shopping, your music recommendations from Spotify, and your social media friend suggestions may all be influenced by artificial intelligence.
Some experts predict that the widespread use of AI will lead to a second industrial revolution. Artificial intelligence has already made a big impact on many aspects of our day-to-day tasks. As more advancements are made to AI technology, it will become even more prevalent in daily life.
About the Author
Prem Khatri is technical project manager at Chetu. Chetu is a true and seamless backend technology partner, helping startups, SMBs, and Fortune 5000 companies accelerate the development of desktop, mobile & web-based apps with regional, on-demand developers that focus on moving businesses forward.
Featured image: ©Siarhei