How AI can help solve the cost of living crisis
How AI Can Help Solve the Cost of Living Crisis
It’s 2022. We’re still enduring the COVID-19 pandemic. Lockdowns in China and a war in Ukraine are severely affecting supply chains around the world. Government-backed stimulus packages for pandemic relief have increased demand for goods and services. But supply chain issues have limited supply.
The most basic law of economics, the law of supply and demand, states that when demand exceeds supply, prices rise. A small rate of rising prices is good. It’s evidence of economic growth. A high rate of rising prices is not good. That’s the bad form of inflation.
In 2022, inflation is higher than anyone desires. But what can we do about it? It’s caused by geopolitical forces that no one nation can control. While individuals and companies can’t overcome this crisis on their own, there are some things we can all do. We can be more productive.
How does productivity affect inflation? By producing more goods and services per worker, we can reduce supply issues. But how do we increase productivity? We weren’t lazy before. Anyone that blames workers for decreased productivity is simply being silly.
We increase productivity per worker by leveraging technology. In the 19th and 20th centuries, we discovered a lumberjack could do much more with a chainsaw than an axe. We learned an accountant could do much more with a spreadsheet than an abacus. In the 21st century, we’re learning that many employees in the information economy can do much more with AI.
AI stand for Artificial Intelligence, but it would be better for workers to think of AI as assisting intelligence. AI isn’t here to take your job. AI is here to help you work faster and be more productive.
The Productivity Growth Crisis
A report from McKinsey Global Institute shows slowing productivity growth in Western Europe and the US since the end of a productivity boom that began in the 1990s. In the late 1990s and early 2000s, companies put more investment into offshoring than investment in technology at home. This drop in productivity growth became worse after the financial crisis.
Some sectors, such as media and financial services companies, were adopting new digital technologies, but many sectors were slow to adopt new methods, particularly in healthcare, education and construction.
In the past, technology was used to stimulate productivity growth. The 2008 Great Recession appears to have led corporations to fear making a significant investment in productivity. However, due to aging populations and smaller labour forces, Western economies desperately need more productivity per worker. Failure to address this will cause a lower standard of living in Western Europe and the US.
In 2018, corporations still preferred to put their profits toward stock buybacks and dividends as opposed to investment in technology. Then, at the end of the following year, something happened that changed everything.
The COVID-19 pandemic caused corporations to change their priorities. McKinsey released a report in late 2020 that claims, in only a few months, the pandemic pushed technological adoption 3–7 years into the future. That’s a start, but because of years of ignoring new technologies, much more must occur before we make up for the lost years of low investment.
Other factors, such as supply chain disruptions from the war in Ukraine and other geopolitical risks, are also stimulating investments in new technologies.
AI Can Help Solve Our Cost of Living Crisis
McKinsey estimated that adoption of the latest digital technologies could contribute at least 2% per year in productivity growth across advanced Western economies for at least a decade.
The most advanced economies are moving into the fourth industrial revolution, also known as Industry 4.0. The impact and velocity of these innovations are unparalleled by earlier industrial revolutions, such as the digital/computer age or third industrial revolution. Industry 4.0 includes the following technologies:
- Industrial Internet of Things (IIOT)
- Cloud Computing and Big Data
- 5G mobile data and gigabit internet
- Additive Manufacturing
- Advanced Robotics
- Nanotechnology
- Artificial Intelligence (AI)
AI is the foundation for advanced analytics, robotics, and many other Industry 4.0 technologies.
AI Video: How Everyday Companies are Using AI
The idea of your company using artificial intelligence may seem futuristic or far-fetched, but you don’t need to be a technological whizz to benefit from AI technologies. Many third-party applications are now available that let you benefit from AI technology. Let’s take just one small area of AI, AI videos, to see how transformative AI can be.
Experts say video content gets 12 times as many shares as text-only content. That’s why YouTube is the second only to Google as the most visited site on the internet. That’s why TikTok has exploded in popularity. But, video content is more difficult to create. You may have to shoot the video several times before you get it right. In the past, this might have been prohibitively expensive. With AI, videos can be quickly and inexpensively produced using text to speech software.
Let’s look at a few use cases of AI video:
Onboarding new employees is expensive. A lot of training is required. Why not produce videos to reduce the time necessary to train new employees using AI text to video software?
Do you need video ads? AI text to speech software makes video ads profitable even with lower click through rates thanks to cheaper ad production.
Do you have language barrier issues at video conferences? AI video technology can translate the conference in real time. This eliminates costly misunderstandings.
Want to create an online e-learning course? Instantly create a course by simply pasting a script into an AI video generator.
As you can see, video AI provides many wonderful cost-saving opportunities for your company. But, where can you find AI video and how much does it cost?
Yepic’s Video AI Technology
If want to create training videos, video chatbots, welcome videos, and more, Yepic Studio is the way to do it. Why pay thousands for a video production with a human presenter, when you can use a video avatar that is indistinguishable from a human? If you don’t see an avatar you like, you can even create your own avatar.
Yepic’s Standard Plan starts from £29 per month, a fraction of the cost of traditional video spend and contains most of Yepic’s vast feature set.
Do you need content translated into multiple languages? Yepic’s avatars can speak your script in over 60 languages. All it takes is the click of a button.
Yepic has an API allowing you to connect workflows to a CRM to make dynamic and personalised content.
With customisable backgrounds, text and shape options, an integrated stock image library, and 400+ voices to choose from, Yepic gives you the ability to create ‘talking head’ presenter-style videos for a myriad of use cases.
Conclusion
While productivity growth is waning, new technologies such as AI can significantly improve productivity which helps individuals, businesses, and society at large. The cost of living crisis has garnered much attention in politics and media, but few have identified productivity as a solution to break the inflation spiral.
Using advanced technologies is simpler than you think. AI technologies are everywhere and can be inserted in your workflows to make your company more efficient. Clever investment in AI technologies saves your company money.
What are you waiting for? Time is money. Try Yepic Studio for free today.
