10 Artificial Intelligence Examples: AI in Practice

Artificial intelligence is an exciting field projected to grow exponentially in the next decade. By exploring real-world uses, you can get to know the diverse applications of AI and how you might be able to apply this powerful tool in your industry. 

Read more: How Does AI Work? Basics to Know

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence (AI) is a tool designed to mimic human processing and analytic skills to analyze problems, identify solutions, and decide on courses of action. Unlike traditional technology, artificial intelligence algorithms have the ability to adapt to new information and follow “thought processes” similar to those of a human brain. This type of algorithm can help professionals make informed and data-driven decisions.

Professionals across a wide array of fields use artificial intelligence, with notable applications in finance, education, business, film, and health care. As we continue to expand our understanding of AI and its ability to assist humans in different contexts, the applications of AI are likely to grow steadily in coming years.

Read more: What Is Artificial Intelligence? Definition, Uses, and Types

10 artificial intelligence examples across industries

Artificial intelligence has wide-ranging uses, many of which you might have encountered without even realizing it. Here are 10 artificial intelligence examples seen in practice across diverse industries.

1. Risk assessment and risk management

In finance, artificial intelligence is a powerful tool that helps financial firms decide who to lend money to. With AI algorithms, banks and other organizations can use the personal information of applicants to decide whether they have a high risk of defaulting on their loans. One of the benefits of AI in this context is that (theoretically) the algorithms make unbiased decisions. These AI algorithms can provide insights that bankers use to make investment and lending decisions depending on user inputs, such as risk preferences and outcome goals. 

AI also detects overall risk by finding trends and providing insights that can help organizations lower their risk threshold. 

2. Customer service chatbots

Businesses have begun implementing chatbots to improve their customer service. These chatbots use artificial intelligence to understand input from users and provide human-like responses that customers can understand. They can respond to direct questions and help customers obtain needed information. One advantage of chatbots is that they do not require human presence, so they can assist customers at all hours, potentially reducing hiring costs for businesses.

3. Streaming service algorithms

Streaming services like Netflix use AI to improve search results and media recommendations for subscribers. This technology is able to continually iterate on itself to offer more personalized content for users and increase adaptive services. The algorithms take previous searches, ratings, and content watched in order to recommend content that you are more likely to enjoy. Streaming services also use AI to make decisions related to what type of content to produce, who to hire, and which areas to improve. 

4. Online shopping recommendations

Similarly to streaming services, AI algorithms can tailor online shopping content and suggestions based on user activity. This type of algorithm monitors your activity on retail sites and learns your preferences and habits in order to provide suggestions that are more likely to interest you.

5. Smart products

Smart products are growing in popularity due to their ability to make domestic life easier for many people. For example, the Roomba is a vacuum robot that can move around the house on its own and clean floors without human direction. With improvements in smart technologies, these robots are becoming able to take human direction and listen to specific commands, such as spot-cleaning certain areas. Other examples of smart products include smart light bulbs, doorbells, thermostats, and household assistants like Alexa.

6. Precision medicine

In health care, artificial intelligence algorithms can make predictions on how a patient will respond to a given treatment or set of treatments. This type of algorithm can determine which treatment will likely be most effective. To do this, the model is “trained” on a set of data, including previous disease and patient characteristics and what the outcomes were. By identifying trends in outcomes, health care providers can offer more individualized care for their patients. 

7. National security assessment

Government sectors use AI to analyze large amounts of data and find patterns related to suspicious activities. Because AI algorithms can process large amounts of data much faster than humans can, AI is a powerful tool to increase the speed and agility of these types of security methods.

8. Educational assessments and feedback

In education, AI algorithms can grade exams and provide insights into the trends of incorrect answers. For example, if a large proportion of learners missed a certain question, AI algorithms can provide feedback to the instructor on the type of content the learners are missing. This can help inform educational direction and improve learning outcomes. Based on learner needs, AI algorithms can also adapt to different learning styles and provide tailored instruction for each learner.

9. Autonomous vehicle development

Autonomous vehicles have long been a topic of debate because of the potential dangers related to algorithm errors. However, they are a great example of how artificial intelligence algorithms are used in ways that allow machines to “sense” the world around us and make informed decisions without direct human input.

10. Weather forecasting

Artificial intelligence algorithms can help many weather forecasting applications to rapidly predict upcoming weather based on global trends and current information. These models reduce costs and save energy compared to traditional methods and can provide ongoing updates and information changes. They have shown greater accuracy than humans in several tests and are becoming more common in application. One recent example of this is GraphCast, a machine learning and artificial intelligence model funded by Google DeepMind and Alphabet. This model can predict hundreds of weather variables internationally and outperforms current industry standards on 90 percent of tested variables [1].

Learn more on Coursera.

You can expand your knowledge of artificial intelligence, machine learning, deep learning, and related fields with courses offered by top universities and organizations on Coursera. As a beginner, consider building foundational skills with the Introduction to Artificial Intelligence (AE) course offered by IBM.