Navigating the AI Service Landscape
Artificial intelligence offers solutions from everyday consumer applications to cutting-edge, fully customized solutions for niche use cases. Businesses should familiarize themselves with the diverse service levels within the AI spectrum to gain insights into the decision-making process for organizations seeking AI solutions for their business problems.
Understanding AI Service Categories
When exploring what AI can do for you, you should consider that AI services can be broken into four main service categories. They are as follows:Consumer AI Services
As consumers, we often interact with AI subtly, such as grammar suggestions in word processors or intelligent scheduling assistants. These services are designed for end-user consumption and require minimal configuration. While they offer advantages, consumer-level AI services are limited in flexibility and customization, making them suitable for specific, narrowly scoped use cases.Citizen Developer AI Services
Citizen developers without extensive coding backgrounds can leverage more robust AI services. Platforms like Microsoft’s Power Platform empower citizen developers to create solutions using pre-built AI functionalities. These services act as plug-and-play building blocks for rapid application development, providing flexibility and control over functionality without requiring in-depth programming. Examples of use cases include chatbots, advanced search capabilities, and internal-facing applications. Citizen-developed solutions often serve as prototypes for more enterprise-grade applications.Pre-Trained AI Services for Developers
Major providers like AWS and Azure offer pre-trained AI models that expose development teams to core data models and advanced AI/ML functionalities. These services, operating at a more fundamental level, allow for extensive customization and fit a variety of advanced use cases, from image and video recognition to fraud detection patterns analysis. These services strike a balance between power and ease of adoption, making them highly suitable for businesses looking to harness the advantages of AI without extensive development efforts. The continuous improvement and industry-specific focus of these services add to their appeal.Ground-Up\Fully Custom AI
Building solutions from scratch becomes a viable option for organizations with highly specific needs beyond the capabilities of existing services. This approach involves programming advanced AI algorithms, preparing custom data models, and extensive training efforts. While resource-intensive, it offers unparalleled functionality and customization. A middle ground may involve utilizing existing pre-trained models and standard algorithms and augmenting them with specific data sets and practices. This approach allows organizations to leverage the benefits of custom AI without starting entirely from scratch.Comparing AI Service Categories to Traditional Software Services
Consideration of AI services based on the categories above clearly resembles that of traditional software service adoptions. For each of the four levels, there are very similar levels of effort and considerations:| AI & ML Category | Traditional Software |
| Consumer | Easily adopted, generally inexpensive, consumer-level software. |
| Citizen | Low\No-Code application development. Generally easy enough to implement with short timelines, but not always a great long-term solution. |
| Pre-Trained\Integrated | Custom software integrations and builds of niche components. Generally prefers using OTS where possible but might need custom build components and integrations. |
| Custom Builds | Highly niche builds, advanced software systems, embedded systems, custom operating systems, etc. |
