Artificial intelligence, or machine learning, is here—everywhere—and here to stay. Whether you’re an advocate or a skeptic of this powerful new technology, it’s impossible to ignore that computer systems are now performing many of the tasks that used to require human intelligence, such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision-making, and language translation.
Here at MGA, we’re getting a lot of questions from clients wanting to know more about AI and whether they should be using it in their businesses. There are many ways you can make AI work for you and your company to great advantage, and one of our goals is to help you better understand how. We want to make sure you can take advantage of the many changes coming your way and not be left behind.
Take Apple for example. One of their chief strategies for 2018 is to encourage more app developers to use machine learning tools. As part of this initiative, Apple recently released a new feature called Create ML which enables developers to create and train custom machine learning models on a Mac. The company hopes that this will create a new generation of ideas from their network of outsourced innovations. Later this year when Apple’s newest operating systems are released, developers will be able to ship their apps using this new technology.
But Apple isn’t a pioneer in this initiative. Facebook, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google have all already released their own software to help developers build AI models. This time at least, Apple is jumping on board.
Yes, many of the big names are diving into the brave new world of artificial intelligence, but keep in mind that you don’t necessarily have to be a Fortune 500 company to reap the benefits AI has to offer. In fact, we use AI here at MGA.
QuickBooks Online saves time and money. If you haven’t already, we encourage you to check out our blog post on why we are encouraging our clients to move to QuickBooks Online and why we have transitioned over to it ourselves. Our reasoning is simple: the AI behind QBO can save you valuable time and money. Processes are automated and everything syncs instantly. Many accounting firms will boast that they can do this for you, but the beauty of QBO is that it allows you to do it yourself. You no longer have to pay a service to do this for you…win-win!
AI learns your habits, so it can help you do things more efficiently. In a variety of industries, it’s already proven itself to be a valuable, time-saving way to perform routine tasks, and while it may not be part of your daily work life yet, that might be right around the corner.
Here at MGA, we have been encouraging our clients not to fear AI, but instead, to think of it as a valuable tool that helps you offload some of your most difficult and monotonous responsibilities. This will free you up to think (strategize, consolidate, plan for the future) rather than just do while providing your company with more efficient and accurate results.
We expect 2018 to be an even bigger year for technology, AI in particular. We are here to help you understand it all and put it to work for you.
As always, we’re your trusted advisors, no matter how simple or complicated your situation.