Back

How To Overcome AI & ML Challenges With Agile Approaches

March 16, 2023

According to the ‘Art of AI Maturity’ research report presented by Accenture, 12% of organizations surveyed deploy A.I. at a mature level, generating exceptional growth and business transformation. 63% of AI-enabled businesses are simply scratching the surface. 

While A.I. may deliver enormous benefits to Enterprise businesses in multiple industry sectors, the technology's potential is far from being realized. While various issues might hinder the progress of your Enterprise AI adoption, there are four major hurdles that businesses will encounter. Recognizing these problems can assist firms in developing a road map and A.I. initiatives. These are the differences between understanding artificial intelligence and reaping its advantages or simply dabbling with a technological novelty. 

Enabling AI-Driven Business Culture 

Organizations that thrive in Machine Learning and solving real-world business challenges with Artificial Intelligence will most likely have a strong innovation culture at all levels. Many businesses are currently experimenting with Artificial Intelligence in some form or another. Teams of data scientists or data engineers lead the path ahead in these firms by generating Machine Learning models that assist the company. Yet, these teams are frequently isolated, and construct models on an ad-hoc basis, almost in an artisanal way, and are detached from the decision-makers, compartmentalized, and receive little assistance from C-suite executives or other departments. 

Businesses that begin Artificial Intelligence (AI) initiatives as an experiment and then pitch them to their organization fail more frequently than those who receive initial production approval. The company's top decision-makers should provide advice to data teams as they develop Machine Learning models to handle these real-world business issues. 

Data scientists frequently conflict with the "conventional ways of doing things" when working in businesses without a strong A.I. culture. Executives may not support Blackbox AI projects as they fail to comprehend how the Machine Learning models generated the findings. 

The language and technological barriers are broken while support and understanding are created by skilling all employees, from CEOs to IT, marketing, sales, and office staff. Collaboration of data scientists with other teams renders fruitful results. 

Shifting from Experimental AI Projects to Production 

Organizations struggle for a variety of reasons to transition experimental AI projects into production. The majority of company issues are directly related to the weak AI culture that causes major issues. 

For instance, CEOs often lack a basic understanding of artificial intelligence's capabilities. For instance, machine learning models can affect a company's bottom line through A.I. solutions that optimize the marketing budget through marketing mix modeling or models that help reduce customer turnover. This is especially true in the current economic situation and the impending recession. However, for a variety of reasons, such as a lack of data, some prediction issues might not be amenable to a solution. 

Also, managers must be aware of how machine learning models function and how long it takes to create a model.  

Large amounts of raw data must be sorted through, and data scientists must then decide which data to use, consult with experts, train their models, and benchmark the outcomes. Imagine that executives are trying to find a solution to a business issue with a deadline, such as forecasting the effects of a recession in the coming three months. In that instance, they must consider the time constraints associated with creating AI models. The lengthy procedures can be frustrating and frequently make it difficult to complete experimental AI projects. 

Technically as experimental initiatives only use a portion of larger data sets, they never reach the production stage. A portion of the data may allow an experimental model to perform well. However, the other variables exist when it goes operational and uses real-time inputs, and the model may drift, fail, or collapse. The fact that data science code is first written in Python, a high-level, interpreted, general-purpose programming language, presents another challenge for operationalizing models. It can take a lot of time and effort to transform Machine Learning code into a form that can be used in production systems. 

Investing in Data Environments, Talent, & Technology 

As machine learning and artificial intelligence have gained popularity, more businesses have emerged which provide these services. Platforms for machine learning automation are popular because they have the potential to speed up and improve the work done by data scientists. 

The following are the four main advantages of modern A.I. solutions: pattern discovery, data pipeline construction, feature validation, and business insight discovery. Data engineering and data science teams may be able to quickly transition from relational enterprise data that is raw and unstructured to the flat tables that machine learning requires; thanks to new tools that facilitate the detection of patterns in data (features). The capacity to feed feature stores with the latest machine learning-ready features that can be applied to as many use cases as feasible to accelerate development time is referred to as building data pipelines for ML. 

By validating features for machine learning to determine how "useful" a feature could be for any particular model, data scientists can also minimize development time and deliver better models using previously verified features. Importantly, innovative solutions can help to uncover business insights. Machine learning crunches vast amounts of data, but although not all may be meaningful, these new technologies may detect patterns in data and apply them even outside of the field of machine learning. 

While new A.I. technology might speed up and enhance operations, it also poses challenges for businesses. Transparency is one of these. An organization may create a complicated model to anticipate sales and demand or manage inventories, but it may not fully comprehend how the model works. This is a problem for a variety of reasons. How can we trust the outcomes or suggestions if we don't understand how the models work? 

Another issue with automatically identified features is that businesses may mistakenly feel they can replace their experts and investments in ML technology. AI automation solutions are designed for data scientists, not to replace them. With these technologies, data scientists may become more efficient and eliminate many of the hassles that hinder development processes, completing tasks that previously took months in less time. 

Transparency and Responsible AI 

The term "Responsible AI" has become a buzzword, with corporations such as Google marketing phrases such as "AI that does not hurt" and Microsoft referring to their cloud as a "cloud for global good." Yet there's more to these slogans than what meets the eye. 

Leading A.I. firms consider how they will utilize their machine learning models and what data they will use from the beginning of the project. There are various ways in which a machine model might harm. It can underperform and have a detrimental influence on an organization, or it can be coded without considering the unexpected repercussions of its use. 

A credit score firm, for example, that is constructing a machine learning model to provide clients with a credit rating in seconds must determine what data is ethical to utilize. While gender, color, zip code, or other data might affect a credit score, which influences whether a customer is approved for credit, data scientists must consider if utilizing such data is ethical. 

Machine learning models and artificial intelligence (A.I.) lack fundamental ideas such as "responsibility" and "ethics," and they can discriminate and be biased. There are ethical considerations that come with designing and utilizing machine learning models. Transparency is crucial in guaranteeing the ethical usage of ML models. It is critical for everyone in the firm, not just data scientists, to understand how an algorithm works and what data is used during the process. 

Transparency is lacking when a machine learning model can handle very complicated issues, but humans struggle to grasp how the algorithm arrives at conclusions or makes predictions and what data it utilizes. These so-called "black box" artificial intelligence models can be troublesome. Artificial intelligence development platforms must enable feature transparency and traceability. The first pertains to people who did not create the model's capacity to grasp how it arrived at its predictions. Traceability, on the other hand, refers to developers' ability to "track" the data items utilized in certain predictions and attributes associated with any given model. 

Yes, Machine learning can be a powerful tool for organizations to gain insights and make informed decisions, but it is important to ensure that it is used in a responsible and transparent manner. There are several key challenges that organizations face when implementing machine learning, including: 

Enabling AI driven business culture: It is important to ensure that machine learning initiatives align with the overall business strategy and goals of the organization. This requires leadership buy-in and support for A.I. projects, as well as a culture of experimentation and innovation. 

Shifting from experimental A.I. projects to production: Many organizations struggle to move beyond small-scale A.I. experiments and prototypes to deploy machine learning models at scale. This requires investment in infrastructure, data management, and deployment pipelines to ensure that A.I. models can be deployed and monitored in production environments. 

Investing in Data Environments, Talent, & Technology: Machine learning requires specialized talent and infrastructure to be effective. Organizations need to invest in building teams with the right skill sets, as well as acquiring and maintaining the technology and data environments necessary for machine learning. 

Embracing the concept of responsible A.I.: As machine learning becomes more pervasive, it is important to ensure that it is used in a responsible and ethical manner. This requires organizations to consider the potential impacts of A.I. on society, including issues of bias, privacy, and accountability. 

By addressing these challenges, organizations can build a strong foundation for successful machine learning initiatives that drive business value while also being responsible and transparent. Read the full blog for more such AI & ML-related information. 

Prudent offers Data services such as Data Engineering, Cloud Services, AI & ML, Data Visualization, and Databricks across many industry sectors such as Manufacturing, Real Estate, Media & Communication, Healthcare & Life Sciences, Education, Financial Services, Government Sectors, Non-profit organizations, Retail, Travel, and Transportation & Hospitality. 

Get a free tech discovery call or write to us at business@prudentconsulting.com 

 

userPublished by Sobha Rani, Creative Writer & Blogger.
mailReach out today at Business@prudentconsulting.com
call

Privacy Policy Terms of Use Legal Disclosure Copyright Trademark Cookie Preference Copyright © 2023 Prudent Consulting., All Rights Reserved