The first BP Corporate Patrons talk took place on 10th October, about artificial intelligence in industry today. The guest speakers were greatly informative and did a great job of keeping everyone intrigued. Learning about how AI is used in industry and at home was so interesting, and encouraged me to go home and learn more for myself! Here are some of the great points BP said during the talk:

Currently, at BP there are around 200,000 employees across 72 countries, and several hundred AI bots. What this means is that a handful of jobs that used to be fulfilled laboriously by people are now completed almost instantly by high-tech artificial intelligence systems. An example given by one of the speakers was an AI program that filters through hundreds of customer service emails every day to categorise them, so they are directed to the right personnel, in just a matter of minutes.

During the talk BP also made their point that contrary to common understanding, these AI bots do not take employees out of their jobs. What this does do instead is open up great windows of time for those who used to be in charge of such tenuous tasks, to work on more important and fulfilling targets that benefit the company.
I was very interested to learn about the types of AI that are commonplace in the modern-day home, and which you may come across in your daily lives. The recommendation system on Netflix is run by an AI software than reviews the viewing data of each account and recommends films and tv that are relevant to the content of what you’ve already watched. Another example of AI in the home is the virtual assistants such as Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Siri. These bots are incredibly innovative and impressive, having been trained to recognise human speech, which is greatly varied and made up of natural colloquialisms, to turn into a command and then a response. We should all be excited for what is to come next in our future!

By Helena Smagala