The rapid adopters span regulated industries corresponding to healthcare, life sciences, financial services, insurance and manufacturing – a shock even to someone like Wood, global vp of AI products at Amazon Web Services, who’s so closely connected to the world of AI.
“If you had told me a year and a half ago that 160-year-old life insurance companies would be at the forefront of using artificial intelligence, I probably would have been a little surprised, but that’s exactly what’s happening,” Wood said in an interview with Sun Life Financial Inc. shortly after visiting Toronto for the Collision technology conference.
His remark turns age-old assumptions about innovation and who’s open to recent technologies on their head. It comes at a time when almost every sector is grappling with advances in AI and considering how the technology can increase productivity and profitability.
How different industries use AI
Wood has recently observed life insurance firms turning to AI to review 90-year-old policies and the identity risks they might pose over the following decade until they’re expected to pay out.
Doctors are also using this technology to transcribe conversations with patients and compile appointment summaries which are so accurate that in blind tests, healthcare providers would select them over human-generated summaries seven out of ten times.
Wood suspects that regulated sectors have made faster progress in AI than others for several reasons.
The first reason is the abundance of knowledge available to them.
Many regulated corporations have extensive databases, market research and development reports, clinical trial results, and patient and insurance records, which hold great potential since the organizations are privately owned.
