10 AI applications you already use (and maybe don't know it)

1 - VIRTUAL ASSISTANTS

Some of you may know them. They are called Siri (Apple), Alexa (Amazon), Cortana (Microsoft), Google Now, and so on. Very friendly and always available, they respond to our voice commands to remind us of an appointment, search the web, send a text message or answer a phone call. "Remind me to call Maria when I get to the office", "add tomatoes to the shopping list", "tell me how to get to the station", are just some of the requests we can make to our invisible helpers.

This software uses artificial intelligence algorithms for voice recognition, but also learns over time our habits and preferences in order to better meet our demands or needs.

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2 - VIDEO GAMES

Video games are one of the most widespread applications of artificial intelligence. AI algorithms allow characters, environments or stories to evolve according to the player's behavior, creating situations that are always new and unpredictable.

Among games that make extensive use of artificial intelligence, a player's virtual opponents in a game have significant advantages over human players, such as the ability to multitask and react with inhuman speed. In fact, in some games, AI designers have had to deliberately reduce an AI's ability to enhance the experience for flesh-and-blood players.            

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3 - CUSTOMER SERVICE

Many online services today use automated systems to manage customer service chats. These applications, called chatbots, are based on evolved artificial intelligence systems that understand what the customer is asking them, what their problem is and provide them with the most appropriate answer.

The real challenge for these systems, as well as for virtual assistants, is to understand the natural language of the human in front of the device.

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4 - PUBLIC SAFETY

Our cities, airports and stations are monitored by thousands of cameras. These images are examined in real time by human operators aided by powerful software that can recognize not so much suspicious faces as patterns of behavior that may be a sign of alarm.

With proper training, these programs, which can process thousands of images per second at the same time, can see if someone is leaving a suitcase at an airport, carrying a weapon, or wandering suspiciously near a school.

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5 - FORECAST OF PURCHASES

The big names in international e-commerce could further boost their already lucrative profits if they could predict consumer needs. Several companies, including Amazon of course, are working on artificial intelligence algorithms that understand what we will need in the future before we realize it ourselves.

If we buy a best-selling fiction book every month, we are likely to be interested in a new one coming out the following month. So why not offer a preview, perhaps at a reduced price?

Amazon, which sells virtually everything from electronics to food, has a wealth of data on its customers' tastes and consumption patterns: an excellent basis for enabling electronic brains to process and guess our needs.

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6 - FRAUD PREVENTION

Although we may not realize it, we are people of habit, even in our purchases or acquisitions. We frequent more or less the same stores and spend more or less the same. If we do something very different from the usual, the banking system notices it. And that is very important for our security, since this type of surveillance is used to prevent fraud against us, such as, for example, the misuse of our credit card.

If we have just made a purchase with the card in the supermarket under our house and after 10 minutes we receive a statement from a store on another continent, we probably have to worry. The AI systems that monitor the world of banking transactions are trained to notice all these inconsistencies and report them to the banks involved to avoid being cheated.

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7 - FINANCIAL SERVICES

AI is helping to observe user patterns and behaviors and consequently is helping to improve decision making by banks, insurers and investors in different areas.

You can track customer satisfaction and analyze customer activities to detect potential account closure before it occurs. It can also check customer spending habits and behavior to offer personalized financial advice. These algorithms can identify trends more efficiently than humans and react in real time.

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8 - SMART HOMES

One of the most interesting applications of artificial intelligence refers to home automation. These are all those systems that manage home environments in terms such as temperature, lighting or sound, always according to our habits and preferences.

There are thermostats like Google Nest that are able to understand how many people are in a room and electric companies that optimize the operation of household appliances to take advantage of the best energy rates. There are also electric blinds connected to our smart phone that close when we leave home and open again when we return. Here the only limit is the imagination.

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9 - HEALTH

Artificial intelligence is also present in the healthcare sector and is able to diagnose diseases as well as doctors but in much less time. Algorithms can help doctors assess patients and their health risks with 95% efficiency. It helps to know the side effects that various drugs may have.

AI can also be used to simulate brain functioning and is therefore very useful in the diagnosis and treatment of neurological problems. As in the case of any other field, repetitive or time-consuming tasks can be handled through the application of artificial intelligence.

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10 - RECOMMENDATION SYSTEMS

The strength of artificial intelligence systems is learning from experience. For example, they can learn what we like to watch on TV, what we usually listen to on the radio or what we order in a restaurant. Once they discover our tastes, AI algorithms can give us consumption and online purchase suggestions, after having analyzed and compiled a myriad of records of the material you have already watched, listened to or consumed.

Who uses them? Virtually everyone: Netflix to recommend movies; Spotify to offer us music; even Facebook: the algorithm that chooses which publication to show us is based on experience through an artificial intelligence engine.

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