If you've been waiting to dip your toe in the AI pool, now is the time to take the plunge. NTCA's 30-Day AI Challenge is an opportunity for newbies to test the waters and for AI denizens to refine their strokes.
AI is transforming major industries, including finance, healthcare, agriculture and defense. Machine learning analyzes market data to drive rapid response investing while protecting banks' cybersecurity. AI-powered telehealth creates tailored healthcare plans and assists physicians with diagnostics. Precision agriculture uses AI to reduce inputs while increasing yields.
Our rural broadband industry is poised to benefit, too. AI tools can help companies with predictive maintenance, customer support, internal operations, and cybersecurity.
Yet despite these advances, users and non-users alike have (understandable) concerns about inaccuracy, data security, labor market disruptions and even an unspoken fear that robots will hasten humanity's end. (I won't dismiss that last point—it is possible. If AI can triage radiology images with superhuman speed and accelerate pharmaceutical R&D by years, it could conceivably direct our planet's denouement. But just as with black hat/white hat hacking, the good guys will use this technology to meet the threat. "The tech that threats is the tech that protects.")
So how do the cautious commence? That's where gamification and the 30-Day AI Challenge come in.
Gamification incorporates typical gaming elements - competition, points, prizes - into non-gaming activities. Think of your diet or exercise app that counts calories and steps, letting you compete with others as you work toward your ideal weight or build reps at the gym. Gamification works because it taps our uniquely human emotions: supplementing long-term achievements with instant gratification, boosting our egos with a sense of victory and motivating us through the dread of second place (or worse). By the way, this emotional drive is what separates us from computers.
And the 30-Day AI Challenge provides a friendly space to tap into those emotions and explore AI's potential. It's Friday night football in cyberspace. Pick a category - content creation for marketing, internal operations, customer support or network management -and discover what AI can do to advance your efforts. Build a bot to create copy. Deploy an AI clerk to capture meeting notes for board summaries. Design a virtual technician that anticipates network outages and generates preemptive service orders before customers even notice a problem.
Then get ready to share. In addition to announcing the big winners at RTIME, NTCA is hosting an online AI summit in late January, and we can't wait to showcase your work. Your innovation could become the blueprint for broadband providers nationwide. Whether through direct replication or inspiration, your entry might solve someone else's operational challenge. Visit the challenge website to learn more and check the "I'll share" box in the application.
Game on.
For additional information about the 30 Day AI Challenge or the NTCA Innovation and Business Opportunity Committee (IBOC), contact [email protected]. Additional resources include the IBOC AI white paper and the NTCA Marketing Committee guide to building custom AI marketing tools.