Understanding AI for Small Businessess

This article has been updated to reflect a change in the name of Bard AI, which is now Gemini.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) is already everywhere. It’s been for years and we’re only now catching onto how far and widespread it has become in our society. But what exactly is artificial intelligence? How is it being used? How can a small business compete in an economy increasingly reliant on AI?

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What is AI?

To understand artificial intelligence, let’s turn to the experts. According to The Coming Wave by Mohammed Suleyman - Co-founder of AI companies Inflection AI and DeepMind - there are three definitions of AI we should be aware of.

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• Artificial Intelligence (AI) – “the science of teaching machines to learn humanlike capabilities.”

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• Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) – “the point at which an AI can perform all human cognitive skills better than the smartest humans”

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• Artificial Capable Intelligence (ACI) – “a fast-approaching point between AI and AGI: ACI can achieve a wide range of complex tasks but is still a long way from being fully general.”

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Using Suleyman’s definitions we quickly start to see all of the places AI is in our lives. Algorithms that predict the next words we want to type in an email or text message have evolved into the powerful tools we now know as ChatGPT and Gemini. AI Virtual Assistants can handle phone conversations increasingly well, and have moved on to being able to schedule appointments, draft and send emails, and plan agendas for certain meetings. But artificial intelligence is a bit of a lofty way to describe what is really going on under the hood with all of these tools.

In reality AI is at its core applied statistics. These machines all work by ingesting large amounts of data at first and then analyzing the trends it finds in that data. Human trainers then go in and study what trends the AI model predicts, and we make corrections as necessary to the final outputs to “teach” the AI which of its predictions are “right” and “wrong”. The AI then uses the data reviewed by humans to improve its predictions for the next time. This cycle is repeated until the AI is good enough at its task to be released to the public.

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Okay, so how can I use AI in my business?

Understanding how to train an AI helps us to imagine all of its current capabilities, the limitations on training it, and how you might implement it in your business or organization. Capability wise, AI is suited well to handle any task that is repetitive and data-based. Tasks such as scheduling meetings and sending calendar invites, drafting common correspondence, taking and managing orders, managing inventory and generating reports, etc. are all great uses of AI capabilities that businesses can take advantage of today.

Going beyond these types of tasks, AI has more limitations in how effective we can train it to be. By nature of needing huge amounts of data, it is hard to train AI on things that are hard to collect data on how to do. For example, cleaners and housekeepers, plumbers, electricians, nail technicians, and other tradespeople are less likely to be replaced by an AI in the coming years than accountants, financial analysts, and graphic designers – types of work already uploaded to the cloud years ago and currently training today’s AI models.

With these capabilities and limitations in mind, the uses of AI for a small business come into view. Virtual assistants can help business owners and managers with project management and repeat tasks, AI graphic designers can support marketing managers with creating new and engaging content at scale. A multi-modal AI receptionist can handle all your incoming calls at the same time while also responding to hundreds of live chat sessions on your website.

Maybe your virtual assistant generates you a monthly report analyzing inventory, sales, and expenses for the month and sends it via email to your managers. Or it sends you a text every two weeks and reminds you to run payroll. The possibilities are endless, but clearly there for you and your team to take advantage of these new capabilities.

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Isn’t AI expensive or hard to implement?

The short answer is no. While AI tools are hard to create at first, they are increasingly becoming built on existing models made available to the public by companies like Google and OpenAI. These connections allow more and more people to use the same AI-models that power tools like Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Because these large companies have done the hardest, and most expensive, part of the work for us, small businesses can now enjoy the benefits of cheap and affordable AI that is ready to scale with your business needs. For data processed using connections to either Google or OpenAI’s tools, you pay only for the data processed. This means that you can build and run an AI Chatbot often for $100 or less per month, depending on the size of your team and user-base.

Designing, building, and implementing the AI is a little bit more complicated. You’ll need to use a platform to host and train your AI-model and a process to handle requests and responses against your model. Then you would need to deploy your model to either your website/app, a messaging tool such as Google Chat or Slack, or to a phone line to begin using it. There are tons of tutorials and training available online that explain the tools available and how to use them to accomplish your specific goals.

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In Conclusion:

AI is a powerful tool rooted in computer science and applied statistics. Using it can help give your business a competitive edge by maximizing efficiency. More importantly, AI can help give you your time back by handling repeat tasks and by generating complex financial analysis and marketing reports for you, so you can go back to focusing on what you love most.

Lyons Labs offers affordable AI solutions for your business using our innovative BLISS platform and BLISS AI solutions. We can help you index your company’s website and other relevant data, and create a custom virtual assistant that knows everything it needs to know about your business. Our team can go through rounds of training and integrations to help you deploy your AI assistants in the most efficient and cost effective way. With our help, you can deploy your own AI model to a messenger app or phone line. We can embed your AI model into an internal website or mobile app for you and your team. Our team also ensures that your data is set-up in the best way possible to segment the information from other company’s data and to protect your business IP and client information.

If you want help getting started with AI for your business, give us a call at 305.204.8030 or email us at team@lyonslabs.info to learn more about how we can supercharge your business with our custom AI solutions.

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James J. Lyons IV is the Managing Director + Founder of Lyons Labs