There is no denying that from the past few years, artificial intelligence has become a talk of the town. And witnessing the skyrocketing popularity, many companies across the world are positioning themselves as an AI-driven company.
However, not every company becomes a “real AI firm” — just yet. To develop AI competencies, startups need to identify a clear problem statement and develop a solution around that. In fact, most startups even lack AI-readiness and simply rebrand their company around the concept of AI to try to show that they are innovative. This has become a serious issue in the tech world and its high time for business chiefs to spot these kinds of companies.
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In order to deal with this ever-increasing problem in the industry, we flesh out a few pointers on how to spot companies that have simply hyped up the technology and parse them from the real ones.
Why Do Companies Hype Up AI?
Before jumping right into “how to spot fake AI companies” let us first understand why do companies fake AI expertise.
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Usually, new and small companies in the IT services space tend to fake AI expertise. So, positioning themselves as AI-driven has become one of the ways for smaller companies to generate leads. With a quirky website and with some stock images, these companies portray themselves a core AI companies. As a result, many companies and business assume that the company must be legitimate in their claims and get intrigued by the kind of branding, and ends up getting in touch with the company to learn more about them.
Another major reason is to make the future plan of leveraging AI stronger. These companies talk about AI expertise at an early stage with a motive to onboard talent that can work on AI. This branding boosts employee on-boarding. People get attracted to joining a company that works in the AI space. Having a significant number of employees with expertise helps a company to move ahead at a good speed.
Furthermore, pushing AI branding is becoming a go-to way for companies to get listed in publications, which is giving these fake AI companies quite a lot of popularity.
Here Are The Ways To Spot Fake AI Companies
Case Studies
This is the first and foremost thing to look for when you are trying to spot a real AI firm. Case studies are the perfect source to have look whether a company is actually leveraging AI and using to benefit others or their product.
To be a top AI company, it takes time for a company to actually bake AI. One cannot simply become an AI expert until and unless it has some real time work in its bag. By looking into the case studies, we can have clear evidence of what AI is doing and how it’s bringing value to the company’s product and its clients.
Also, an AI firm might have some success stories on its website, reading how it is leveraging AI to help clients, but when it comes to data, training algorithms, or how it is AI, there is nothing. So, don’t fall for the success story baits until and unless the required information isn’t present.
The Way The Company Proposes
AI plays the role of value-creation and that is the end goal of solutions. If in case, you happen to get in touch with an AI company and wish to go ahead with a discussion, then make sure you look at the way they propose you the end value to be gained from their solution. These companies strongly claiming that AI is at their core, but when it comes to explaining how they are going to deliver value to its clients, they fail. If the company is actually using AI, should know how to say what it is doing and how it is doing.
Always make sure to get every single detail about the work process and how that company is going to deliver value.
Engineering Team and Their Credentials
Employees make a company and when it’s about AI, a company needs to have employees with significant experience and achievements in the field of AI. So, before getting into a deal with any AI company, one should always have a look at the employees of the company.
How to do that? LinkedIn is one of the best sources to carry out this step. Search for the company, then have look at the list of employees working at that company. When you are going through the list, make sure you don’t forget to check the engineering team and have a look at their experience, qualification, previous work etc.
Talking about employees, do not forget to see the tech ratio. There are companies that have only one data scientist among all the employees, and being an AI company it is imperative to have more than one data scientist give the load of work and the knowledge it requires.
Wrapping Up
In this ever-competitive business world, touting up tech buzzwords has become the norm and more and more companies are re-positioning themselves as AI-first technology. Hence it is wiser to stay away from companies that hype up the technology, especially AI. But, if a firm has a significant number of people working on AI with relevant experience, has substantial case studies that show their work, also VC-backing and understand how the technology works and value-creation for clients, then that company can truly deliver real value. Before onboarding an AI vendor, companies should do a thorough evaluation and understand how the vendor will build a business case for AI.
