Combining human expertise and artificial intelligence to improve strategic business decision-making

Businesses around the world are aiming to become data-driven organizations, bringing together human and artificial intelligence to provide individually tailored services in an efficient way. Artificial intelligence and machine learning have enormous potential to transform businesses and disrupt entire industry sectors. Many companies are already using data analysis, algorithms, and AI to collect, store, and analyze their data. Machine learning algorithms enable the automatic detection of complex relations in data, which is then used to predict future events. When referring to artificial intelligence, the distinction between general and narrow AI is generally made. General AI systems exhibit intelligent behavior on par or even surpassing human intelligence. Narrow AI systems aim to solve a particular problem and specialize in the execution of a specific task. Current AI systems are still far from general intelligence and act as systems that perform specific tasks. Still, efforts to achieve general AI continue.

Overall, businesses need to address the question of how to generate value for their customers and stakeholders. Alongside knowledge, information, and resources, algorithms are a new source of competitive advantage. Algorithms allow creating value and can be tied to decisions. The output of an algorithm is typically a prediction, which can then be translated into operational decisions, for example, how much of a product to produce or purchase, how to price a product, or whom to send targeted advertisements. Which kind of decision a data-driven algorithm can optimize? Integrating artificial intelligence into a business requires more consideration than traditional analytics. The knowledge worker needs to define which decisions concerning which data should be taken by which algorithm and under what conditions. Additionally, integrating decisions taken by artificial intelligence also needs to address how human and artificial intelligence work together and how decisions are taken.

For the foreseeable future, AI systems are not suitable for all kinds of decisions. Deciding which category a particular business idea falls into and which requirements must be addressed to build an appropriate algorithm requires extensive technical expertise. The Enterprise AI canvas is designed to tightly engage Data Scientists, AI specialists, and business experts to ideate together, identify the most promising, data-driven, AI-supported use-cases that bring value to the company and its customers, prioritize them, and evaluate and assess their feasibility. It also makes the engagement process productive and efficient by guiding participants through key issues and providing suggestions on how to implement them.