Generative AI is revolutionary
There’s a huge amount of excitement in technology and business circles about generative AI (GenAI), its potential, current implementation, and future capabilities. How much interest, exactly? Think 222 million Google hits for “generative AI” at time of writing
The column inches are well-deserved. More than a mere business tool, this creation may prove truly revolutionary, its effects pervading all walks of human life and endeavour.
As Bill Gates recently enthused: “In my lifetime, I’ve seen two demonstrations of technology that struck me as revolutionary [Graphical User Interface and ChatGPT].”
Venturing even further into the realms of hyperbole, leading economist and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers told Bloomberg: “ChatGPT is a development on par with the printing press, electricity and even the wheel and fire.”
Generative AI systems, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT, are creating a brand-new technology arms race; one that is rivalling the processor, memory, or bandwidth wars of previous generations. Whereas hardware was the battleground of previous waves of tech innovation, today’s skirmishes are being fought in the realm of software and apps.
Every major software company is incorporating GenAI into its product and service offerings. The implication is clear – get on board or miss the boat completely.
But is this level of hype justified? Just why are GenAI tools getting business leaders and tech pioneers so excited? Here we’ll explain, briefly, the impacts and implications of this radical invention.
the evolution of genAI
Today’s GenAI systems had relatively primitive beginnings. Essentially, there have been three developmental phases in this new technology since the turn of the 21st century:
PHASE 1: Early 2000s. Machine learning (ML) was developed. This was a method for using large pools of data and pattern recognition to shape algorithms, which in turn were targeted towards new data sources. These systems were able to analyze data, make predictions, and generate actionable insights.
PHASE 2: 2010s. Deep learning expanding the horizons of ML. As well as drawing upon structured data, these systems could extend their pattern recognition capabilities to include unstructured text, images, and sounds. This allowed the creation of facial recognition systems, voice recognition software and semantic understanding.
PHASE 3: 2020s. GenAI continued to build on deep learning’s foundations. GenAI can create perfectly structured text, which is grammatically correct, logically structured, factually true (validated) and usable. Many of these systems now surpass the Turing test for humanlike communication. some of them can write serviceable code and author automations. They can interpret language and correctly impute the author’s underlying intention.
Why GenAI is an opportunity, not a threat
What GenAI tools are emphatically NOT, however, is sentient or autonomous. GenAI apps must be correctly prompted and shaped for a particular purpose to be maximally useful.
Evalueserve always partners its GenAI analytics with human domain knowledge and administrative support. Our GenAI tools are invaluable for their unprecedented analytic power, but they must also be coordinated and validated by human experts. Checks and balances will always apply.
Impact of GenAI in Business
Although everyone from students to artists are experimenting with GenAI software, it is in the realm of business that this technology is having the biggest impact. Broadly speaking, this is occurring in three ways:
1: Individual Impact
2: Company Impact
3: Transformative Impact
These three layers of transformation occur simultaneously as concentric domains of productivity improvement. Whether users are lone consultants, employees of SMBs or directors of global corporations, GenAI’s revolutionary power to optimize businesses and achieve greater productivity is being felt everywhere.
horizontal and vertical integration of GenAI
As well as benefiting all links in the value chain, GenAI can be utilized throughout different departments within a single organization. Every business function from research and development through to customer service, is impacted.
Such versatility is due to the universality of the natural language function – it delivers value for any department that requires communicative and informative output.
As computing power continues to become cheaper, access to GenAI tools will become more affordable at scale. The AI revolution is happening in tandem with revolutions in quantum computing and the replacement of silicon chip technology with alternatives that enable speedier processing.
The sheer speed of AI innovation means it’s hard to imagine the digital future ten years from now, let alone a generation from now or 50 years hence. What is knowable is that GenAI will be a part of that future, and organizations who want to ride the AI wave should invest now.
Evalueserve is happy to offer a suite of AI-empowered services, including AIRA (AI for Research and Analytics) and numerous GenAI solutions including financial data analytics, our social curation chatbot, and our virtual assistant for business intelligence.
Visit our AI solutions page for more information.
