Creating hybrid synergy, the crowd, content, and you: the future of AI and ML
AI and Machine Learning (ML) is both the present and the future for any, and all, industries, dependent on human ability to best utilize it for maximum reward.
KMWorld hosted a webinar, titled “The Future of AI and Machine Learning,” which examined the utilities and possibilities of AI and ML as it rapidly increases in prevalence. With speakers Jonathan Meyer, senior solutions engineer at Hawksearch by Bridgeline, and Ramona Aubry, head of customer success at expert.ai, the webinar explored both why AI and ML will continue to prove useful for various industries, as well as how it can best be employed.
Meyer poses several conceptual pillars that inform the way ML can be best maneuvered within ecommerce industries as well as any search-based sites. He introduces a “Wisdom of…” approach that targets a variety of strategies that ML deploys for optimal profit and sales opportunities. “Wisdom of the Crowd”, Meyer posits, is the foundational sentiment behind ML regarding its integration with ecommerce and search platforms; referring to the way ML can track what visitors are doing within a particular site in order to give suggestions, “Wisdom of the Crowd” takes shape in pop-ups such as “customers have also bought…” to generate purchases and visitor engagement. ML removes the necessity for manual relationship assignment inputs within a system to dictate these suggestions, ultimately saving resources for marketing or product teams.
“Wisdom of the Content” refers to the way ML can use the content of the site itself to inform suggestions made to visitors. Examples of this strategy are pop-ups such as, “recommended accessories” or “similar items”, guiding customers towards purchases that are relevant to their current one. Meyer closes with “Wisdom of You,” which uses AI-driven personalization to push visitor purchase and/or engagement. This is a major enterprise strategy employed by big names like Spotify and Netflix, and can be simplified to fit the needs of smaller businesses. The “Wisdom of You” ML strategy involves signals like customer location, order history insights, recently viewed items, and predictive search boxes to increase average order value and visitor engagement.
Aubry elaborates on the intricacies of the future of AI and ML, emphasizing the importance of natural language processes (NLP) and natural language understanding (NLU). A great challenge regarding the future of AI and ML deals with the ambiguity of human language; Aubry gives the example of words like “bank,” which have various meanings depending on context, and can cause issues with business processes powered by AI and ML. The solution to this issue is hybridity of AI and ML, with an understanding of NLU, according to Aubry. As a subfield of NLP, NLU helps machines interpret language, derive meaning, and draw insights to aid enterprise operations; the appropriate NLU engines can support enterprises’ ingestion and interpretation of knowledge with consistency to deal with ambiguity. Further, Aubry emphasizes the need to compound AI and ML systems to create a holistic solution to the downsides of both strategies—what AI or ML lacks, the other makes up for. This combination is ideal to provide explainable, enriched knowledge processes for optimized enterprise benefit.
You can view an archived version of this webinar here.