Billion-dollar investments in AI are booming. What does this mean for startups looking to AI for their innovative and competitive edge?

The strategy seems simple: take one of humanity’s perennial problems and fix it with machine learning. Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Uber did it. It can often seem like the obvious question is why not use AI? At the very least, your new strategy is guaranteed to have the requisite buzzwords a startup seems to need in order to succeed.

There are countless examples of user experiences that are meaningfully enhanced by AI. But, there are also problems that don’t benefit from AI at all and might even be worse off if AI is applied.

We’ll take you through a decision making process that can help you assess if AI is the right approach for your business, including: identifying the need for AI, how to give users control over outcomes, and why AI is not really magic.

Identify the need: Will your investment in AI add value?

Entrepreneurs these days often start their journey by asking “How can we use AI to solve X?” While this can be a good starting point, even the best AI system will simply be a drain on resources if it doesn’t provide a unique value to users or customers. Your first priority should be to evaluate where AI could add unique value.

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