Artificial Intelligence (AI) – what is it? Ian Ernst explains it to the Covington Rotary Club – NKyTribune

By Andy Furman
NKyTribune reporter

There was absolutely nothing artificial about Ian Ernst’s presentation. The Erlanger native addressed the Covington Rotary Club last week over lunch. And, he wasted no time at all telling the assembled group what exactly is Artificial Intelligence.

Ernst and his partner Leo Rader know all about it – they operate Alliance Technical Group, LLC – what they call a “Practical AI for Your Business and Machine Learning Solutions.”

Their company serves such high-profile accounts as Fifth-Third Bank, Anthem, GE Aviation and Vantagepoint Funds.

But what exactly do they do?

First, let us explain what Artificial Intelligence is – and Ernst did a masterful job through his slide presentation to the assembled group.

“It’s a broad field involving the use of technologies to give machines the ability to mimic cognitive functions associated with human intelligence,” Ernst pointed out quite clearly on his screen. He added that Machine Learning is a subset of artificial intelligence where a machine or system can learn automatically and improve from experience.

“Machine learning uses algorithms to analyze large amounts of data, learn from the insights, and then make informed decisions,” he said, as the audience seemed to be somewhat puzzled, yet in a deep trance to learn more.

Ernst went on to explain who uses AI and, more importantly how they use it. Amazon and Netflix he explained use IVR – Interactive Voice Response – voice to text.

He also wowed the group when he showed the stat on self-driving cars. Waymo, he explained, has 7.13 million fully driverless miles in three cities – Phoenix, Los Angeles, and San Francisco.

Closer to home, he did mention AI has been used as autonomous robots as house vacuums.

Ernst says all he wants to do is help businesses be more effective and efficient using AI tools.

Did we mention he is volunteering on a cancer research project at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center with a medical research doctor. But on this day his goal was helping – and teaching – a new group of business people the advantages of AI.

And for the Rotarians who are local business people, well, Ernst explained how AI can be beneficial to them.

“It can generate advertising materials,” he said, “And generate out of office notifications; as well as creating job descriptions from tasks or job titles.”

The biggie is creating real estate images with virtual furniture staging, he noted.

Ernst next touched on machine learning and showed the members on hand how it can help their business.

Some points that Ernst touched on were:

• Stay ahead of your competitors by using data to predict future outcomes.
• Identify potential customers by using predictive analytics to target those most likely to buy their products and services.
• Improve market segmentation with insights gained from your data
• Predict customer behavior by analyzing past purchasing patterns.

And, of course, it works – all of it. Ernst has the documentation to prove it. He says digital royalty earnings statements from Oracies data warehouse, report $10+ million monthly to 40,000 artists and right holders.

He added CRM deployment for Panasonic Toughbook division growth $600m to $1B, and performance improvements for Banking Website with 1+ million page views per-day.

That’s results.

And they’re not artificial.