It isn't a new concept. And, despite its presence over the years, it has only managed little space amid business and technology discussions, that too, intermittently.

This concept is Artificial Intelligence, or, AI.

However, today, the conversations around AI have not only started gathering steam, but organizations are finding increasingly significant value in its implementation.

Experts at Infosys believe that the scope and opportunity that the technology provides is not to be missed.

Balakrishna D R, SVP, Service Offering Head - Energy, Communications, Services, AI & Automation Services, Infosys suggests that the perspectives are now changing, and there are a range of benefits for organizations that make use of the technology.

“It can help you reduce costs, it can help you transform, it can help you in the business continuity aspects,” says Bali, adding that there are a lot of companies that were initially working on a few proof of concepts, but are now looking to scale AI across the entire organization.

Experts believe that organizations across sectors are looking at this as a serious opportunity.

The heating, ventilation, and air conditioning industry, or HVAC industry, for instance, is gradually pivoting from an operating model focused only on selling products to one offering comfort as a service.

Vijay Narayan, SVP, Industrial Manufacturing, Americas, Infosys notes that embracing AI for such an industry is imperative for both survival, and growth.

“Because you will not make a profit unless you are able to predict things a lot better, and be able to keep to your SLAs, which is what you're going to get paid on,” he says, adding that improving processes is also crucial for manufacturing organizations, and AI can help with that.

“Using AI for things like better quality through image optimization techniques, better asset efficiency, replacing assets when it's actually going to fail rather than at periodic places… will be helpful,” says Narayan.

AI is not only effective in organizing processes, but also recognizing trends and demands in sectors such as retail.

“Where is the consumer offtake happening. What consumers are buying. It doesn't matter what I saw last year. But what is happening this year, this month, this week, right now,” says Suresh Prahlad Bharadwaj, AVP, Lead Product Manager - TradeEdge, EdgeVerve, while also noting that AI can aid real-time analysis, and help move away from the earlier rules based replenishment model.

He notes: “Where (AI) can play a role is really the ability to take this new paradigm into its modeling, and then say, ‘Hey, I can actually look at any demand signal and be able to identify where there is a potential opportunity for fulfilling the demand.’”

Not only this, but today AI can also help in recognizing a wealth of opportunities by sifting through large mounds of data available in the form of user reviews. As a key data source, reviews can not only help enhance the customer experience across all touchpoints, but also help predict demand.

AI can also make a significant difference in making healthcare better as a service, says Venky Ananth, SVP, Global head of Healthcare, Infosys. He notes that information such as traditional longitudinal data records, along with a person’s unique traits could better help serve healthcare needs.

“If he or she can put them all together and deliver better care, that would be useful for me,” says Ananth.

Not only in the healthcare space, but AI can even aid in managing the catastrophic wildfires that are impacting lives across several parts of the world, says Balakrishna. These fires, he says, are usually caused by dry vegetation under power lines, and are a cause for heavy destruction, loss of human life, loss of property, as well as environmental damage.

He suggests that drones and technologies such as Lidar mapping, a remote sensing method used to examine the surface of the Earth, can be used in a predictive capacity to prevent wildfires.

Experts believe while there are innumerable benefits that AI has to offer, there is no doubting human capacity of ingenious thinking.

For Narayan, while AI can take a lot of the non-critical decisions, it helps humans tackle the more difficult problems.

“(AI) helps humans focus on stuff they do the best, which is parsing very ambiguous situations, and being able to take decisions which takes human intelligence and human emotions into account,” he says. And, Balakrishna agrees.

“It actually is accelerating the thinking around how you should actually develop skills that are more long term in nature that actually leverages the human mind much better,” he says.

For the healthcare space, says Ananth, while AI can process massive amounts of data, which can then be used as an additional input, treating human beings is not like a simple math model.

“You combine intuition, you combine years of experience, but when you be an aid to a physician, where you're able to process massive amounts of data, and then use that and do that as an additional input, then the quality of care can be far superior than what it is today,” he says.