10 Artificial Intelligence Examples: AI in Practice

Key takeaways

By exploring real-world uses, you can get to know the diverse applications of AI and how you might apply this powerful tool in your industry.

• You might use artificial intelligence (AI) in your wearable fitness tracker, when chatting with a customer service chatbot, or when checking out a playlist recommended by your streaming service.

• Artificial intelligence is useful in many industries, including finance, education, business, film, and health care.

• You can use AI to assess risk, protect national security, run smart products in your home, and predict the weather.

Discover the details about 10 artificial intelligence examples in everyday life. And if you're ready to learn even more about AI, consider enrolling in the Google AI Essentials Specialization. Led by Google experts, you'll have the opportunity to learn how AI can help you speed up daily tasks and spark new ideas, use AI responsibly by identifying its potential biases and avoiding harm, and develop strategies to stay up-to-date in the emerging landscape of AI.

What is artificial intelligence?

Artificial intelligence 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 the coming years.

How is AI used in everyday life? 

Artificial intelligence is slowly but surely becoming a concrete component of modern life. Using a search engine, driving with a navigation app, or allowing spell check to suggest edits in a document are all examples of little ways that you may be using AI. You may use AI in your wearable fitness tracker, when chatting with a customer service chatbot, or when checking out a playlist recommended by your streaming service. 

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. Examples of artificial intelligence in risk assessment and 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. 

Read more: Machine Learning in Finance: 10 Applications and Use Cases

2. What are examples of artificial intelligence in customer service? 

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. AI in 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. Examples of artificial intelligence in online shopping recommendations

Similar 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. Artificial intelligence examples in real life: 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. Examples of artificial intelligence in health care

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. AI in 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. Examples of artificial intelligence in 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. AI in 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. What are examples of artificial intelligence in 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 applications. One recent example of this is GenCast, 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 97.2 percent of tested variables [1].

Access free artificial intelligence resources on Coursera

To learn more about how AI is integrated into the world and how you can pursue a career in this field, subscribe to Coursera's YouTube channel. Then, take a look at these additional helpful resources:

• Watch on YouTube: How AI is Transforming Business (And Your Morning Coffee)

• Find a career path: AI Career Quiz: Is It Right for You? Find Your Role

• Learn key terms: Artificial Intelligence (AI) Terms & Definitions | Coursera

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