Technological innovations and solutions have been pivotal to the global economic growth since the past 2 centuries. From the steam engine, to aircrafts, to handheld devices and now self-driving cars; these pioneering technological solutions have created opportunities for growth, by offering a customised solution to a problem the world was facing.
Artificial Intelligence is the next big thing that revolutionises the way we perform every task today . Machines that mimic human actions and perform a near efficient and fast paced replica of repetitive, high frequency and manual intensive tasks. It is an avenue that supports the creation of ‘intelligent’ machines that react and work like humans. This includes commonly used traits like problem solving, reasoning, learning, planning etc. and has already become a mainstream concept that has begun impacting many aspects in present day lives.
Influenced by Alan Turing's theory of computation in the 1950’s which raised the key question of “Are machines capable of thinking?”, it is claimed that John McCarthy a professor of mathematics at Dartmouth who first came up with the term “Artificial Intelligence” in the year in 1955 at a conference organised around this. Two years later, with the growing curiosity and growing scepticism around this field and the potential it hold, American Economist Herbert Simon and Cognitive Psychologist & Computer Sciences Researcher Allen Newell predicted that computers would beat humans at chess within 10 years. During the late 1960’s, Cognitive Scientist Marvin Minsky remarked that “Within a generation the problem of creating ‘artificial intelligence’ will be substantially solved.”
Though there was a lull that followed during the 1970’s and 1980’s, initiatives under A.I then picked up steam in the late 1990’s where information gathered began to be used for logistics, data mining, medical diagnosis etc. On May 1997, Deep Blue became the first computer chess-playing system to defeat Garry Kasparov who was the reigning world chess champion. This event made the world stand up and take notice, as A.I. had truly arrived.
At present, with greater use of cloud computing technologies as well as extensive use of research and analytical tools in a mobile and connected world, the use of A.I by renowned tech companies and other organisations now are at an all-time high!
Analysis based on a PWC report that was shared in mid-2017 estimated that Global GDP will be 14% higher in 2030 as Artificial Intelligence is estimated to add $15.7 trillion in terms of productivity.
Tech pioneers of this generation like Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg and even the late Stephen Hawking have all been taking about A.I. these years, be it in support of this technology or otherwise.
All this noise actually points out to how Artificial Intelligence now is changing the way we interact, gather information and simply get ‘things’ done. There is immense opportunities offered by the field of Artificial Intelligence in the coming years, barring the usual bottlenecks of having the vision, implementation and sustenance of this technology,
At the 4th global edition of VFS Global’s annual innovation workshop “iConnect” for the outsourced government services industry that was in Dubai recently where 129 delegates from 55 countries gathered to interact and discuss the most significant technology trends and the cutting-edge solutions offered by VFS Global in visa, consular and citizen services space, one topic that stood out in terms of the interest generated was the growing relevance of Artificial Intelligence (AI) & Bots to transform customer experience. Discussions included how technology was now maturing and making inroads into various sectors from assisting in travel across airlines to enhancing the customer experience through these automated ‘bots’ to simplify the visa process.
Chatbots are programs powered by Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to converse with customers (and other stakeholders) through an interactive interface. This can be used for wide variety of objectives, be it functional, engagement or even for pure fun! Popular bots include the virtual assistant created by a popular e-commerce company and the intelligent personal assistant offered by a popular mobile company to interact with their users.
A 2016 report by Gartner, a leading Information Technology research and advisory company, mentioned that the average person will have more conversations with bots than with their spouse by the year 2020!
We are at an interesting phase in the A.I. revolution where there is higher probability of interacting with a bot and not knowing it, than ever before. In fact Artificial Intelligence has already begun its steps to impact the lives of millions across the world through:
With a base of 4 billion global users across messaging applications points to the fact that consumers are now very comfortable with a chat based user interface because it provides quick exchange of information and ensures very high level of engagement. Recent surveys indicated that most online consumers return to a website that has a chat option as a majority of them found chat option a ‘extremely helpful’ feature. Even companies that offered online chat as an option witnessed a rise in web traffic and a subsequent drop in contact centre inbound calls.
Taking these developments into consideration and also being mindful of the changing requirements in future as to how customers and applicants would like to interact, VFS Global has commenced steps to build in Artificial Intelligence based technology in its conversations for select client governments in specific location with the intention to scale-up this requirement in future.
VFS Global is set to roll out its chatbot, ViVA, the first-of-its-kind technology in the visa application processing and consular services industry. ViVA will offer added convenience for applicants by helping with their visa-related queries and act as a round-the-clock support. Offering a consistent experience, ViVA will also register customer feedback and help to improve upon the quality of services. Turnaround times will be shorter as customer queries will be responded in a fast and efficient manner.
In July 2017, VFS Edu Support Services Pvt. Ltd., the education services arm of VFS Global, announced a partnership with award-winning UK-based Edtech Oxademy Technologies and its subsidiary Oxademy Business School to form the new global digital learning platform named ‘VFS-Oxademy’.
VFS-Oxademy offers the ‘first-of-its-kind’ knowledge-driven artificial intelligence (AI) cloud infrastructure called OX360 which identifies each learner's strengths and weaknesses and generates learning paths based on individual learner’s behaviour, personalising the learning to each individual student. This intuitive system will also provide real-time analysis of the students’ performance data.