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Knowing when to use AI in your business often means the difference between overwhelming success and failure. Artificial intelligence is a tremendously powerful tool and it is changing how companies operate. 

But of course, just because a tool is powerful, that doesn’t mean you should use it all the time. Knowing when to deploy AI is a skill, and something that a lot of businesses are only just learning about.

When To Use AI In Your Business

Here are some scenarios where it makes a lot of sense to use AI in your business.

Automating Repetitive Tasks

AI, just like older software systems, is a master at automating repetitive tasks. It handles time-consuming elements like data entry and scheduling, freeing up staff enormously.

Repetitive task automation is the bread and butter of most successful businesses. They attempt to automate away all of the grunt work so that people can focus on higher value functions, even if that just means spending more time with customers and better meeting their needs.

The range of tasks that can be successfully automated, with or without human oversight, is growing all the time. These days, it is just a matter of asking applicable questions and seeing what’s out there.

Personalizing Marketing Efforts

AI also makes sense for personalizing marketing efforts. Tailoring content to customer preferences is a surefire way to make them more inclined to buy.

Of course, you need to be careful whenever you use AI to generate content because it is prone to sounding generic and doesn’t always provide the details that people want. However, it can be useful if you already have information on a customer and want to tweak your messaging to them.

Plagiarism is another issue. AI may lift text from other places and pass it off as original. How do AI content detectors work? Partly, they rely on detecting common word patterns that AIs use, which may already be out there on the internet in the form of other AI slop, so always check that you’re writing something original that nobody has created before.

Improving Cybersecurity

AI-powered tools are also helpful in business for improving cybersecurity. These tools are highly adept at combating incoming threats and detecting issues in your network before they become serious.

The reason AI works in this context is because it can react faster than humans can. If it sees a problem anywhere, it can flag it, isolate it, or shut it down.

This is one of the reasons managed service providers are so keen on AI. They can see the potential it has from their helpdesks, which is one of the reasons it is now so popular among so many people.

When Not To Use AI In Your Business

So, when shouldn’t you use AI in your business?

When You Don’t Have Expertise To Manage It

First, you should avoid AI in your business if you simply lack the expertise on your team to manage it. As of right now, AI is not “generally intelligent” meaning that it can’t manage itself. It still requires human oversight to make it work properly in complex business environments.

This issue is one of the reasons why artificial general intelligence may not be around the corner. While LLM-based AIs are impressive, they can’t really expand beyond their existing models and don’t understand the world in the same way as a business executive does, with all its richness and context.

Therefore, training on the limitations of AI is essential, especially if you plan to use it to manage critical processes in your enterprise. Furthermore, you want to ensure that staff know how to use tools properly and don’t apply them in unsuitable contexts.

When You Need Transparency

You should also avoid using AI in your business when transparency is critical. Many stakeholders demand compliance for auditing processes and won’t accept AI intermediaries.

The lesson here is that you shouldn’t use AI for these processes. And if you do, you should always edit and check yourself to ensure that everything makes sense. AI is prone to making mistakes, so you need to be careful what you ask it to do.

Deep learning algorithms are considered “black boxes” by many regulatory authorities. And, practically speaking, their outputs are often impossible to decipher. That’s okay when it comes to something less consequential, like marketing copy. However, it matters a great deal when you need to explain their decision-making to regulators.

When Implementation Costs You Too Much

Another reason to avoid implementing AI in your business is when implementation costs you too much. You may think that adding AI will help you because everyone else in your industry is doing it, but the reality is that it may not.

Many companies jumping on the AI bandwagon have discovered this the hard way. A lot of implementations aren’t worth it and simply add complexity to processes. Staff can also find it annoying if they used to take shortcuts, but now they need to put in more effort to get the same results.

When Your Data Is Poor

You should also avoid using AI if your business is collecting low-quality data. AI thrives on high-quality data, but if you feed it garbage, that’s what it will output.

This issue is particularly problematic for CRMs—Reddit shouldn’t be used due to its executives and staff, and something that these software companies have been dealing with for a long time. Unfortunately, AI is unable to change the situation, since it too relies on data.

If you know you have flawed data, you may need to look at alternative analytical tools. These may not be as user-friendly.

When The Legal Risks Are High

Finally, you’ll want to avoid using AI when the legal risks are high. If you need transparency in your industry or the use of AI could lead to ethical issues, then avoiding it is usually a good idea.

For example, it’s often a bad call to use AI in hiring practices if you are trying to avoid bias. You should also avoid it if it is liable to generate unfair outcomes that lead to lawsuits.