Artificial Intelligence (AI) is reshaping how businesses operate, offering tools to streamline processes and improve decision-making. Despite its potential, many companies don’t fully utilize AI. Serhii Tokarev, an IT entrepreneur and co-founder of Roosh Ventures, explains how AI can help businesses turn mistakes into valuable lessons and thrive.
Learning from Mistakes with AI
Failure is part of business and life, but repeating the same mistakes leads to setbacks. Serhii Tokarev explains that AI can analyze errors and transform them into actionable insights. He outlines several ways businesses can use AI effectively:
1. Finding Cause-and-Effect Relationships
AI excels at uncovering complex connections that might go unnoticed. Serhii Tokarev highlights how declining sales could be linked to factors like pricing, changing demand, weather, or emerging trends. AI can analyze such patterns across areas like sales, logistics, and production workflows, helping businesses fix problems at their root.
“For example, if there is a drop in sales, we might attribute it to decreased demand or pricing issues. AI, however, can uncover unexpected correlations—such as the influence of weather, emerging trends, local nuances, or geographical factors,” explains the entrepreneur.
2. Building “Institutional Memory”
AI can learn from a company’s past to improve its future. By analyzing historical data, AI identifies patterns in successes and failures, offering strategies tailored to specific contexts.
Tokarev points to UPS’s ORION system as a strong example. ORION uses AI to optimize logistics by studying delivery routes, customer data, and performance history, saving time and costs.
3. Listening to Customers
Customer interactions hold valuable insights. Whether through chatbots, reviews, or feedback, AI can analyze data to improve customer experiences.
For example, if customers frequently ask the same question, it may signal a need to update the company’s website or social media. AI can detect these patterns faster and more comprehensively than humans, making it especially useful for B2C businesses.
4. Balancing AI and Human Oversight
AI isn’t a standalone solution. Serhii Tokarev stresses that human supervision is critical for making contextually sound decisions.
“Consider the case of Zillow’s real estate division, Zillow Offers, which relied solely on algorithms to predict housing prices. Without human intervention, the system failed to adapt to unforeseen events like COVID-19 and labor shortages, leading to massive losses, layoffs, and the division’s eventual shutdown,” explains Serhii Tokarev.
By combining AI insights with human expertise, businesses can avoid similar pitfalls. Learning from others’ mistakes, as well as their own, is key to building a successful AI strategy.
Serhii Tokarev shows how AI can turn business challenges into opportunities. By identifying patterns, learning from the past, and listening to customers, companies can use AI to enhance operations and decision-making. However, a balanced approach—mixing AI with human judgment—is essential for long-term success.