The Value of AI-Powered Business Intelligence

What does it mean to infuse artificial intelligence (AI) into business intelligence (BI)? What are the benefits of AI in BI? Let’s begin by defining our terms:

Artificial intelligence

Refers to simulating human intelligence within computer systems. Some call it augmented intelligence because the underlying technology is augmenting, rather than replacing, human intelligence. AI is currently capable of performing tasks such as visual perception, speech recognition, decision making, and translation between languages.

Business intelligence

Refers to a range of technology solutions that help businesses analyze, visualize, communicate, and share their information.

AI is fast becoming a critical component of BI. Here are three key points worth highlighting:

• AI in BI is a game changer because it allows line-of-business (LOB) users to easily discover data-driven insights in their domain without requiring specialized, data science expertise. Working independently of IT, while remaining within an organization’s secure and governed IT architecture, AI in BI empowers all users—not just IT specialists—to discover actionable, easy-to-understand insights.

• AI in BI takes advantage of the power of natural language and learns from users’ interactions to customize and personalize insights into their data. A natural language interface (NLI)—which consists of natural language processing (NLP) and natural language generation (NLG)—makes it possible ...