Artificial intelligence, automation and machine learning. All big topics with massive potential – but what difference can – and should – they make to your business?
We’re here with our latest Software Surgery to help you figure it out.
Firstly, we know that, in reality, many business leaders are more focused on their organisations than on whether to use AI or not. However, we’d argue that it should form a key part of any business’s digital strategy for the simple fact that it offers benefits, especially when it comes to productivity.
There are a lot of tools out there that can perform fairly basic tasks for you; they will help you write code, write text, generate imagery, video and textual content and help you organise data. The tools are not perfect (yet), but it is a good starting point to help increase productivity in the workplace.
Because ultimately, the goal of AI from a human perspective always comes down to making processes and tasks more efficient. It’s not, like some people worry, about replacing people totally; the whole role of a piece of software is to reduce the amount of manual effort that humans do so that you can free up that time to do other things.
Does it work?
In summary, yes it does, but that’s not to say AI is without its risks; as people are already finding, it’s far from failsafe and still very much needs those human checks and balances.
Take a spellchecker: one of those products of AI we all have experience with, whether that’s when writing a report, texting or creating web content.
If you misspell a word, the spellchecker will come up with possible solutions. So, it’s taken the hard work out of rereading the document with a careful eye and looking up in a dictionary to find the correct spelling, but it still needs human input to choose the right word.
Using this as an example of AI working well, the new world of AI will slowly start to become the fabric of business use but essentially the machine is only going to do 80% of your job for you; the rest is up to the user.
Take writing, as another example. With software such as ChatGPT, you don’t need to be any good at writing, spelling or structure. However, you still need to be able to give the software something to work with, so you feed it your ideas and it does the rest.
Is it safe?
Privacy is another credible concern when it comes to AI. All these solutions feed off data – that’s how they become good. It’s a vicious circle; if we want them to perform better, we have to keep giving them data, and that’s where privacy concerns come in.
If you’re using it, you are essentially opening your world up to it, and it will then utilise your data. We see examples everywhere – your mobile phone is listening to everything you’re saying whether it does anything with the information or not.
Take something like the McDonald’s app as an example, where you’ll be telling your friends you are hungry and could eat a burger, and all of a sudden you get a notification from McDonald’s – that’s no coincidence.
So, is it worth it?
Yes, we think so, but privacy and originality are a concern. Most businesses will be sharing data without even knowing it, as an example most off-the-shelf CRM software will be harnessing the data you provide it for its own benefit. The likes of Chat GPT will do the same.
Like every new innovation, at some point, you have to adapt and evolve because otherwise you’re left behind but be careful with what you and the team share. A good move would be to create or adapt the company data policy before adopting the new breed of AI tools. By doing this, you will ensure data protection, compliance and accountability and address potential risks.
If you’d like help understanding how these tools can benefit your business then please get in touch, we’d be happy to guide you through the various tools to use and their specific application. Contact our team by emailing sales@sapere.co.uk or fill out our contact form.