What are we solving for?

As you integrate AI tools and applications into your various business workflows, one thing is certain: there is much to choose from. In 2023 alone, over 15,000 AI-related startups were born in the US.

The possibilities for these systems & integrations are virtually endless. The technology is fun to work with, learn about, and play with.

As you move forward with your company’s AI journey, it is essential to remain mindful of data privacy and security risks. To promote safe AI usage within your organizational culture, ensure that you have developed appropriate authorization, access, and cybersecurity policies.

There’s a lot of buzz around AI as a new, shiny object. However, artificial intelligence technology has been around for a long time (since the 1950s, actually). The difference today is that it is available to the general public, who can now interface with it using natural, spoken language.

With the new widespread adoption of generative AI, we enter an age of widely available models of general intelligence delivered directly to individuals and businesses. Now that it is widely accessible, the operators of general AI need not be expert practitioners learned in the technical knowledge of underlying infrastructure, code or the fine art of programming and development. AI operators of tomorrow will think and process information differently, focusing on increasing detail, complexity, and abstraction. Paradoxically and essentially: IT is abstracting ITself. What will be the results of the world’s grand effort to supplement the actual with the artificial? Only time will tell.

The sheer power of AI is heard and felt within the context of language itself. For the first time in human history, we move toward a new generation of collective intelligence the world has never seen. Processing information faster than any human ever could quickly outpaces and displaces the mundane, repetitive, and redundant.

Language learning models (LLMs) help reduce language and communication barriers. With the aid of these LLMs, individuals and corporations can improve the quality of written communication. Companies can now utilize AI to refine and streamline the entirety of downstream thought process, response, and interaction throughout the corporate structure and culture to include both internal employee and external customer operations.

In the cybersecurity realm, AI’s power is clear now more than ever. Within this context and with the aid of AI/LLM technology, cybersecurity teams can perform analysis work that would otherwise consume copious amounts of time and effort.

The difference today is that – for the first time in recorded history – these AI model applications are directly available for individual and business use without the requirement of specific technical knowledge. Instead, we can interact with it via motion, gestures, and now through intelligible language and responses nearly indistinguishable from human counterparts.

Pre-built tools & applications

Pre-built AI tools are pre-programmed & designed to serve a specific purpose. These are the tools your team would most likely be interested in to save time immediately. These apps can help you process faster and are “pre-tuned” to help with tasks like word processing, content production, writing & grammar, and more.

A few examples:

• https://rytr.me/ – generates content (thousands of tools like this are popping up all over the place)
• https://otter.ai/ a tool for running better meetings
• https://grammarly.com a well-known AI engine that helps with writing
• https://monday.com – work project management + CRM tool
  • Copilot for Microsoft 365 – integrated into Microsoft 365 with many new features:
  • Solve complex problems all from within the familiar Microsoft Office platform
  • Stay on top of chats, meetings, and calls (powerful Teams integration features)
  • Create and elevate documents from within Microsoft Word, Outlook
  • Keep up with your inbox and manage follow-ups
  • Create PowerPoint presentations with ease
  • Analyze, comprehend, and visualize data right from Excel

Examples:

• Microsoft Copilot Studio – Create, train, and publish chatbots to Teams and SharePoint
• ChatGPT for Teams – Create, train, and publish advanced conversational models to publish & share internally with your team or externally with third-party customers, suppliers, and leads

Within BYO AI platforms, your team trains the model around your “core curriculum,” so to speak (think of your GPT as your student – you are teaching it how to respond and answer to language inputs in the manner, style, and “persona” you want). For example, your team can train a knowledgebase application to help customers save time and find answers faster through an AI-powered chatbot.

In general, regardless of whether you opt for a pre-built tool or a build-your-own approach to utilizing an LLM, it is vital to consider and understand the input data used to train it, how and where the data is stored, secured, and accessed, and how the application protects data security and integrity.

As AI continues to impact the business and personal landscape, we are in for exciting times. Regardless of context, a crucial question we must ask ourselves as businesses and individuals is: what are we solving for?