In dangerous work environments, effective safety measures can be the difference between life and death. That’s why many companies are now exploring AI in workplace safety tools.
What Is the Role of Workplace Safety?
Workplace safety is the practice of ensuring hazardous work environments are safe to work in. Industrial machinery such as assembly lines, CNC machinery, and the equipment found on oil rigs can easily cause injury or death if proper precautions aren’t taken. Businesses are responsible for ensuring their work environments are safe and are constantly on the lookout for new technology that can help them in this task.
How Does AI Intersect With Workplace Safety?
Artificial intelligence, the field of creating machines and computer programs that can think and learn like humans, is already being explored in everything ranging from surgery to supply chain management. Three fields of AI being used in workplace safety are:
- Natural Language Processing: Natural language processing (NLP) is the process of teaching AI how to understand human speech and writing. This reduces the need for manual data entry, which includes safety reporting. NLP software can also analyze written data and extract critical findings or insights, such as information from a post-accident report.
- Machine Vision: This field involves using AI to analyze video footage and images to spot details that might go unnoticed by human eyes. Using machine vision, an industrial AI box PC can monitor both employees and equipment in a workspace, track equipment malfunctions, detect trespassers, and even spot if an employee isn’t wearing the correct personal protective equipment.
- Predictive Analytics: AI can analyze massive data sets to derive new insights. For example, it can establish cause and effect by browsing thousands of after-accident reports, determining the sequence of events, and examples of successful strategies to detect potential risks in a workspace.
How Can AI Be Used in Workplace Safety?
AI is currently being explored in numerous roles in workplace safety, including:
- Real-Time Monitoring: Equipped with machine vision, an AI can track multiple areas in a workspace without getting tired or distracted, making the technology perfect for monitoring machinery and workers. AI can spot issues before they spiral out of control, such as damaged machinery that needs to be shut down.
- Behavior Recognition and Intervention: Connected to the first benefit, AI can recognize erroneous behavior by workers and prepare interventions and corrective measures. If a worker doesn’t follow the correct safety protocol, the AI can identify that behavior and help managers schedule corrective training.
- Planning and Prevention: AI’s capacity for predictive analytics lets it excel in the planning and prevention stages of workspace safety. For example, let’s say a company is designing a new factory and wants to prevent workplace accidents. An AI can analyze other factory layouts and how machines and assembly lines are placed on the floor, then compare that with post-accident reports to determine incident hotspots. The factory designers can then take this information and plan their layout to avoid making the same mistakes.
Incident Response: After an accident, AI can assist in responding to the incident to help ensure it never happens again. Using machine vision, AI can analyze images and video recordings of an accident to identify what went wrong and when. This helps workers and operators adjust their processes and prevent repeat incidents from occurring.
Challenges for AI in Workplace Safety
No technology comes without growing pains or challenges. There are several concerns for implementing AI in workplace safety, with the most significant being:
- Cybersecurity: Any safety measure can become a hazard if it gets compromised, and cyberattacks on industrial sites have become increasingly common in recent years. If businesses plan to invest in AI technology, they cannot afford to neglect their cybersecurity measures, such as data encryption and access control features.
- Ethical Concerns: AI can potentially be used for biased or discriminatory purposes or fail to accommodate for human diversity due to a lack of data. Several facial recognition programs have failed to recognize different faces with darker skin, for instance. At the same time, many workers fear that AI will be used to invade their privacy and spy on them. Companies must prove to their workforce that AI is being used to supplement their efforts, not dominate or replace them.
- Implementation Costs: Any new tool or piece of technology has a price tag attached to it. Compounding this is the fear that time spent on training to use this technology will lead to a loss of efficiency. One way to alleviate this issue is to work with original equipment manufacturers who can develop AI computers that deliver the performance businesses need without exceeding their budget.
Embrace AI with Cybernet Computers
By implementing AI-powered processes, companies in the industrial sector can enjoy more efficient operations, lower accident rates, and better responses to any incidents that occur. If you’d like to start implementing AI computers in your business, contact our team to explore options or develop a custom solution.