AI is already intertwined in numerous sectors. As seen in the AI trends for 2021, 2020 was a time when companies needed to accelerate the adoption of AI-based systems with a breakneck speed in order to adapt to digital working environments. AI is omnipresent in our lives and an integral part of business success and we can expect this trend to continue. In 2021, AI will become even more commonplace, and with this, the AI divide will grow more ubiquitous. Losers and winners will be determined by the level of access to AI technologies and how they leverage them. On the individual level, some companies are always more advanced than others with applying new technologies. Although AI tools are being applied in nearly all industries to a greater or lesser extent, below are the domains that will stand out in terms of putting AI to use in their operations on a global scale.

Recent developments in AI are impressive and exciting, but also overestimated and misunderstood. In order to split hype from reality and help to form a view on this field, we will implement scenarios for selected industries zooming in to the techniques that are associated with AI, the most appealing business applications and potential issues we can expect. For a lot of tasks, computers are becoming or are already better than humans. The calculator on cell phone for example, can calculate the most difficult multiplications in an instance that would take people a few minutes and a piece of paper and pen. It has already been a long time since the world champion of chess was able to beat the strongest ches computers. In the past few years, however, computers started doing typically human things such as seeing and hearing, which they do as good as, if not better than people. Google can recognize exactly which things are present on an image and Siri can understand what we are saying, to name a few examples.

In the coming years, the intelligence of these applications will increase in a rapid pace, due to developments in the field of neural networks and increased computational power. The increased accuracy, availability, and ease of implementation of artificial intelligence methods creates opportunities for companies to apply them in their business. As an example, insurance companies use AI to read claims from their clients, understand if the claim is difficult or easy, and it can give a recommendation on how to handle the claim. The insurance employee then only needs to do a quick check before approving the recommendation. This can save a lot of time and increase the quality of the work.