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Automation and productivity

As explained in The Art of AI Product Development

Automation and productivity is a benefit category in which AI performs or accelerates work to reduce effort, time, or operating cost.

Automation and productivity treats AI as a way to perform routine work, accelerate decisions, and free people or teams for higher-value activities. The durable opportunity begins with customer problems—not fascination with AI—and weighs productivity gains against trust concerns and operational costs. section 2.1.1

Look for opportunities where AI can:

  • Learn and perform repetitive decisions in customer service, fraud detection, or invoice processing. section 2.1.1
  • Reduce the cost of work that currently keeps entire teams busy, particularly in B2B settings. section 2.1.1
  • Complete useful tasks that customers would like done but defer because they lack time or resources. section 2.1.1
Figure 2.3 AI opportunity tree for a music streaming app
A diagram of a company AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Map automation and productivity alongside other AI benefits when exploring opportunities in a music-streaming product. section 2.1.1

Figure 2.4 The AI cost equation for automation opportunities. Beyond the development and operation cost, you should also estimate the cost of finding and fixing mistakes and the risk of uncaught mistakes.
A blue squares with white text AI-generated content may be incorrect.

Estimate the full automation cost, including development, operation, finding and fixing mistakes, and the risk of uncaught mistakes. section 2.1.1

How The Art of AI Product Development covers it

How deep it goes
Defines routine-task automation and extends it to cost estimation, but stops short of implementation detail.
Examples
Uses a music-streaming opportunity tree and routine tasks such as customer service, fraud detection, and invoice processing.
What it assumes
Starts from customer needs, pains, and desires rather than assuming users want AI.
What you can do after
Evaluate automation opportunities by comparing freed capacity against operating, error-correction, and uncaught-error costs.
How it connects
Connects automation with AI opportunity trees, customer service, fraud detection, invoice processing, and human-AI task allocation.
Cover of The Art of AI Product Development
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This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of The Art of AI Product Development. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.