Artificial intelligence out and old fashioned solutions in during pandemic

The hype around artificial intelligence getting eroded as old-fashioned solutions are doing the magic during this pandemic

Application of AI is getting difficult due to the sudden break from the past trends forced by the virus-imposed economic shutdown.

In order to predict and carry out its primary applications, AI requires feeding of  substantial amount of relevant data. Due to the present crisis, gathering enough data is not possible and this is the reason why most fashion brands cannot really go back to their pre-pandemic model because it will no longer be useful to them as they might get pointed in the wrong direction and this can be detrimental to their mere survival.

Previously experts perceived AI as a magical framework where any business process could be transformed into a moneymaking platform. Now as the times are changing, many struggling start-up fashion houses are complaining that they cannot find any use of the AI. In the past AI has resulted in destroying several white-collar jobs.

The hype around AI is drastically subsiding, AI is being perceived as a useful tool to accomplish some very basic and mundane stuff. As per Rachel Roumeliotis, Vice-President at O’Reilly Media, “AI is mostly about assisting humans in making decisions”.

During this crisis, many data scientists have been axed from their job. According to a recent survey conducted by SharpestMinds, a startup that mentors data scientists, 6% of their alumni have faced lay-offs or pay-cuts during the month of May, although they survived in the month of April. As per them, the hiring of data scientists has significantly gone down by 50% during the pandemic. The demand of data scientists is gradually diminishing.

Recently Uber and Airbnb took their first step in cutting down of their spending on AI. Airbnb laid off 29 of their full-time data scientists, while Uber decided to shut down their AI R&D lab.