BI, or Business Intelligence, has been a trend for over two decades and allows organizations to view business activity in near real-time by collecting its data in one place (e.g. a data warehouse). AI, builds on BI by using statistics and machine learning to make decisions and recommendations of behalf of the business in real-time.

AI serves the role of a team of experienced statisticians using data to make every decision a little bit better. Humans are pretty good at making routine decisions in relatively unchanging environments. However, it is difficult for us to consider large amounts of information in a purely unbiased manner. Some companies are able to hire teams of statisticians to crunch numbers, but AI can achieve similar results at a fraction of the cost.

AI can be applied to virtually any system or business process that is generating data. Whether it is understanding your customers better, processing thousands or millions of text documents, or monitoring complex machinery for signs of trouble, AI can help reduce costs and increase revenue.

Experienced data scientists are hard to come by and typically command high salaries. However, a data scientist also needs a lot of support both technically and organizationally and many data scientists end up being underutilized due to IT constraints and organizational structures.