SigmaWay Blog

Machine learning applies artificial intelligence to automatically learn and improve from experience without being explicitly programmed. Machine learning applications are generally applied to those areas which involve processing lots of a data; a field where humans aren’t well-equipped. Machine learning applies discovered insights in ways that can optimize the customer experience. Chatbots provide effective solutions by stimulating an interaction with a customer service representative or resolving simple inquiries. Machine learning helps chatbots learn when to give specific responses, from where to gather necessary information and most importantly when they should hand off a conversation to a human agent. Virtual assistants, with the help of machine learning focus on specific areas where they can provide assistance to the customers. In order to continually optimize, customer service needs measurable analytics. Machine learning can help add a predictive element to support analytics. Thus machine learning helps in delivering better customer experiences. Read more at: https://www.business2community.com/brandviews/zendesk/how-is-machine-learning-being-used-in-customer-service-02215814

Irrespective of the business size, employees are always on the front lines of the company’s cybersecurity. Based on studies, it has been concluded that two out of three cybersecurity incidents occur because of employee negligence. Employees can be the company’s best defense or its biggest liability. Therefore, cybersecurity training is very important. Employees tend to reuse the same password everywhere. This is a risky practice making it easier for sensitive information to go in the wrong hands. Company Policies must ensure that employees change their passwords every few months. Moreover employees should be taught to spot phishing attempts, including spelling and grammatical errors, suspicious attachments, request for personal information, free offers etc. Sometimes just visiting a site can infect the entire network. In order to maintain security, employees should be taught to hover over the links before clicking on them to see the actual URL; if it looks suspicious it would be best to avoid it. Thus as we see, untrained employees can be the biggest cybersecurity threat. Hence companies should shore up their security systems, starting right from its employees. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/employees-cybersecurity-threat

Google’s internet bot detector has evolved over the years from Captcha to reCaptcha to reCaptcha V3. Now, no more boxes need to be checked, nor is identifying objects or alphabets required. Studying the way an individual navigates through a website, conclusions can be drawn on it being a bot or not. This improvement however comes in at the cost of the user’s privacy. According to a researcher, Google uses cookies to identify whether a user is a bot or not; the same cookies which enable us to open new tabs and open accounts without the need of logging in everytime. Another researcher however states that a browser connected with a Google account is more secure than the one which isn’t. Hence, although security is gained, more of the user’s data is also going into the hands of Google. Read more at: https://www.fastcompany.com/90369697/googles-new-recaptcha-has-a-dark-side

Google maps new features not only includes the updates of traffic, but also how crowded the public transport will be. Google has been asking people to fill up forms wherein they are asked about their departure time and number of seats available. This data helped the Google maps in predicting the peak time and the most populated stops. Similar study has been done about predicting the crowds at restaurants. Also, delays in bus and their expected time of arrival is notified by the Google maps, which are available on both Windows and iOS for almost 200 cities. Read more at https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/27/google-maps-can-now-predict-how-crowded-your-bus-or-train-will-be/

With advancement in Internet of Things (IoTs) such as asking the personal digital assistant to read the news, give weather reports, turn on/off the lights, locking up the house and many more, our lives are being simplified, though not as seamless as expected. In Edsger Dijkstra’s words, “Simplicity is a great virtue but it requires hard work to achieve it.” It is analytics that trains the technology for doing hard work so that its virtue can be enjoyed by the people. Hence, with every passing day, as IoT is taking over, Analytics market is becoming more complex since machines have their own languages and specifications and idiosyncrasies. Read more at https://www.experfy.com/blog/to-serve-man-the-internet-of-things-and-analytics

Walmart acquired Flipkart is one of the two biggest e-commerce platforms in India with eight million shipments per month on an average. With ever increasing speed of people coming online each day, Walmart new Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) will help in meeting these demands faster. This pilot project of sortation will be applied at Flipkart’s Soukya sortation center in Bangalore, where the 100 self-guided robots will sort the packages according to the delivery pin codes. While these AVGs are expected to increase efficiency by 60%, i.e. 4500 shipments in an hour, the easy mobility of the AVGs will always help Flipkart in expansion of supply chain operations. However, according to Jeff Bezos, AVGs won’t take away employment opportunities but only increase efficiency. Read more at https://www.businessinsider.in/flipkart-announces-delivery-robots-automation/articleshow/68493938.cms

Few factors where data analytics can be seen creating an impact on this sector as stated below: • Reporting and Business Intelligence: With the help of reporting and dashboards, the travel companies can draw inferences. The most important factor for this industry is seasonality, which can be studied by performing analytical operations on the data. • Alerting and monitoring system: Anomalies and rare observations can be detected which is not possible manually due to huge chunks of data available. • Optimization and efficiency building: Analytics help organizations prioritize their investments and redirect them towards high priority factors. • Personalization: Personalizing always attracts attention of customers. • Enhancing business strategy and customer experience: Along with variations in seasonality, forecasting is equally necessary to define the business goals. Read more at https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/travelling-on-data-how-data-analytics-is-transforming-the-travel-industry-4131941.html

The field of AI is largely unexplored and we have only scratched the surface of what AI is really capable of.Understand the AI types will allow us to gain perspective on its capabilities and impacts in future.The degree to which an AI system can imitate human performance is used as a criterion for determining the type of AI.Based on this, AI is classified into two types-One type is based on classifying AI enabled machines based on their resemblance to the human mind , ability to think and feel.According to this system,the four types of AI are-reactive machines,limited theory machines,theory of mind and self aware AI.The second type of AI classification usually used in tech has three categories- Artificial Narrow Intelligence(ANI),Artificial General Intelligence (AGI), and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI). Read more at: https://cognitiveworld.com/articles/7-types-artificial-intelligence

The AI World Government,a three-day forum that started on June 24th, gathered leaders in the government,academic and industrial sectors to exchange views on the challenges and possible benefits of AI in the automation. According to leading companies such as Gartner and McKinsey,AI has cognitive abilities,and tends to imitate human performance by learning, understanding complexities, predicting and providing solutions.Intelligence and defence government agencies are heavily relying on AI for its application and growth in the areas of healthcare, transport, commerce and administration. It is clear that the government is investing heavily and wants to explore the capabilities of AI .The methodology of developing tools and applications of AI came across as a public-private partnership supported by investment which is looking at combining human and computer power.

Read more at: https://www.aitrends.com/ai-in-government/government-an-integral-partner-for-exploring-ai/

Big businesses have huge repositories of data.Each company is in the race to draw more value from this data so that they are not competed out.Data is unorganized,metadata initiatives have been falling and unearthing and extraction of data has become more difficult. Data protection regulations have exacerbated the problems.Lack of data management, renders data inefficient. IO Tahoe has published on Data Catalogs-a metadata management tool as a solution to this problem. The speed of AI coupled with human learning will help companies to overcome challenges of data management.There are several kinds of data catalogues and this report is a guide on which will be best for your company.

Read more at: https://insidebigdata.com/2019/06/18/ai-driven-data-catalogs-right-business/

Few factors where data analytics can be seen creating an impact on this sector as stated below: • Reporting and Business Intelligence: With the help of reporting and dashboards, the travel companies can draw inferences. The most important factor for this industry is seasonality, which can be studied by performing analytical operations on the data. • Alerting and monitoring system: Anomalies and rare observations can be detected which is not possible manually due to huge chunks of data available. • Optimization and efficiency building: Analytics help organizations prioritize their investments and redirect them towards high priority factors. • Personalization: Personalizing always attracts attention of customers. • Enhancing business strategy and customer experience: Along with variations in seasonality, forecasting is equally necessary to define the business goals. Read more at https://www.moneycontrol.com/news/technology/travelling-on-data-how-data-analytics-is-transforming-the-travel-industry-4131941.html

Increases in data implies more house-keeping of the same for drawing inferences. Robotic Process Automation (RPA) does that easily by automating manual, rule based and repetitive human task for focusing on other important tasks. RPA reads the data of the organization, cleans the data as per the business requirements of the firm, organizes it and sends through an automated workflow process. This data consists of only the relevant data from the lot and are easy to retrieve. This data is thus ready for being analyzed. The major advantage of RPA is, it makes the data strategic, efficient and relevant which keeps guesswork out of the process. Read more at https://www.experfy.com/blog/why-todays-business-decision-makers-need-data-and-robots

Coca Cola is one of the biggest companies and a top brand in its domain. Advertising plays a big role in building a brand and maintaining its reputation. This consistency has been witnessed with this brand which has come with the help of Big Data. Big data was first used by Coca Cola in gauging the effectiveness of their social media posts. Responses to the campaigns showed the user patterns which would indicate the success of the same. Data mining tools help in monitoring brands’ presence over social media and determining its presence in pictures. Hence this led to undertaking many branding strategies, one of them being ‘Bring Back Surge’ campaign. As a result, new flavors were introduced, AI applied in machines, mobile payments, special offers and others like optimizing cost, supply chain management and promotion code scanning using OCR. Read more at: https://www.analyticsindiamag.com/coca-cola-leans-on-data-analytics-ai-for-deeper-industry-insights/

The existence of a gender based price discrimination where women’s products are typically more expensive than men without any reasonable cause is widely known as ‘’pink tax’’. Lately, this gender discrimination has extended to car insurance with women paying more despite men being risky drivers. A recent study concluded that women especially older ones pay higher care insurance in at least 25 states. The Consumer Federation of America (CFA) revealed that insurance company not only charges different rates based on gender but also on the city in which a particular person lives in. While some countries including California, Massachusetts have already prohibited gender based car insurance pricing, we can hope that greater reliance on big data can provide some solution. Big data is greatly helpful in determining fairer and accurate insurance rates based on relevant factors. Read more at: https://channels.theinnovationenterprise.com/articles/inconsistent-correlations-between-gender-car-insurance-rates

Business intelligence (BI) tools, used to prepare, present and analyze data are now transforming the small businesses. The chief role of BI is to convert tons of raw data into useful information that the business executives can use. Small businesses will grow if and only if it can break down and analyze the information available on its server. BI tools help businesses make smarter decisions and also in Customer Relationship Management (CRM). Businesses must always find ways to understand their customers better. This is where BI solutions like YellowFin and Looker play a massive role.BI tools also help in boosting data governance and compliance. Thus BI helps small business owners avoid mistakes by keeping data accurate and up to date.Read more at: https://www.business2community.com/business-intelligence/how-business-intelligence-tools-are-transforming-small-businesses-02208030

The most powerful algorithms extensively used in the field of deep learning are neural networks. Here we focus on the artificial neural networks which are nothing but the computing system based on the structure of human brain. It is a type of machine learning which is used for detecting patterns in unstructured data. A lot of business applications today depend on neural networks to solve various complicated problems. However companies use neural networks in various ways. For instance, as explained by LinkedIn’s Deepak Agarwal, neural networks are used in LinkedIn along with text classifiers to detect spams. Neural networks are widely used in activities like marketing, finance, operations management, insurance etc. Thus the capabilities of artificial neural networks are inexhaustible. Read more at: https://www.cmswire.com/digital-experience/what-is-a-neural-network-and-how-are-businesses-using-it/