Artificial Intelligence: Trends, tools and bloopers
What should your company be doing with AI? That’s the question everyone is asking right now. Is it going to reimagine customer service through the use of chatbots? Or is it going to reshape productivity within the business as it allows for employees to create their own workflows that cut down on admin? Or is it, perhaps, going to be something entirely unexpected.
Like the fact that it was first showing signs of promise in the 1970s with ELIZA, an algorithm that showed immense potential in the realm of language recognition and problem solving, and was not just used to win chess tournaments against famous players.
Since its first early steps, AI has proven itself a fascinating and constantly evolving technology with immense potential. Today, just over a year since ChatGPT rocked the world with its incredible capabilities and Microsoft put Copilot into its 365 ecosystem, AI is still sitting on the edge of its own innovation.
Weak vs. Strong: AI defined
Generative AI – the AI found in solutions such as ChatGPT – is finding its feet across multiple applications and purposes. It is a chatbot for an airline, and it is a failsafe in a manufacturing plant. It is a financial services fraud detection tool, and it is a quick way to summarise vast quantities of content into relevant bullet points. It is also what IBM defines as artificial narrow intelligence (ANI) or weak AI. Its intelligence is narrowed down to do certain things in a certain way and is the most common form of AI.
Strong AI, or Artificial Generative Intelligence (AGI) is the intelligence of the self-determining system capable of the same level of cognitive thinking as a human being. IBM defines it as ‘a theoretical form of AI where a machine would have an intelligence equal to humans’. It is self-aware and it can learn. This is not a technology available as yet, only appearing as a theoretical construct in research.
And yet, the baseline for what is possible with AI keeps changing…
AI: an intelligent trendsetter
The one thing AI does more than the average celebrity is dominate the headlines. It’s in wearable devices that are changing how healthcare institutions manage patient care. It’s seeing unexpected partnerships forged between mega brands – like the recent announcement that Apple and Meta are looking at an alliance within AI – and remarkable scientific discoveries – such as the radical magnet free from rare-earth metals developed by an AI in less than three months.
Looking ahead, there are some trends shaping the future of AI within the business and consumer spaces, and these are some of the most interesting:
Strong vs. Weak may become Weak vs. Average
It is unlikely that AGI will see the light of day any time soon and if it does, its emergence will have to be carefully monitored in light of ethical and safety considerations. However, what is likely is that weak or narrow AI solutions, like ChatGPT, will become stronger. While they won’t sit at the edge of AGI, they will become increasingly powerful and capable, offering a depth of support and understanding that will transform productivity, operations and task-management.
Quantum AI
Quantum computing has been perhaps as much a focus of conversation as AI, although on a deeper scale. This form of compute is incredibly powerful but also incredibly heavy on computing power. Requiring intensely powerful technology to perform to its full potential, quantum isn’t readily available to the business on the street today. However, it has potential, and when combined with AI it can radically reimagine how quickly companies and systems can process data, solve problems and transform computing capabilities. While currently only in use by select institutions, quantum has already been used to accelerate research in drug discovery.
Automation and security
Intelligent process automation is a huge positive for many industries, specifically manufacturing and mining. It can be used to automate processes within complex environments, reducing risk and improving worker safety and wellbeing. These tools also take over the boring and mundane tasks that sit in the background, freeing up human capital to work on more complex and relevant tasks. The other arm of this trend is security. The automation of security tools and systems, proactive threat detection, intelligent environment analysis – all these factors combine to create a powerful security skillset that doesn’t sleep, learns as it works, and provides companies with much-needed peace of mind. At a time when threat actors are using AI to catch the unwary and find vulnerabilities, it’s going to be interesting to see how AI evolves to provide richly layered protection to companies.
AI: The tools changing the world of work
It’s become very easy for companies to tap into the AI revolution. Companies such as Microsoft, Meta, Google and Apple have all leapt into the AI space with solutions designed to enhance the world of work or improve the ways in which people engage with technology. These are the most exciting and powerful tools on the market today:
1. Claude – this solution by Anthropic provides organisations with the ability to harness one of three beautifully designed models that they can then use to create next-generation tools. Offering up advanced reasoning, code generation, multilingual processing and so much more, Claude is a smart step towards industry intelligence.
2. Copilot – Microsoft’s Copilot is arguably the most famous of the AI companions (after ChatGPT) because it has been integrated comprehensively into the Microsoft 365 ecosystem. From analysing emails in Outlook to summarising meetings in Teams to providing developers with code amends, Copilot has vast applications and is proving an invaluable productivity ally to the business.
3. Gemini – Google’s AI-powered chatbot that can also be leveraged by the business to improve productivity, chatbots and more. Gemini offers users access to LLMs and tools that can be used to enhance application development and create innovative solutions for the organisation.
4. Midjourney – this GenAI tool has become the de facto leader in AI image generation, providing exceptionally vivid and realistic images using natural language descriptions and prompts. Like DALL-E from OpenAI – the creators of ChatGPT – Midjourney has become a powerful support for the business and overrun marketing teams.
5. OtterAI – one of many transcription and recording tools using AI to enhance meeting note taking and tracking, Otter joins Firefly and Microsoft Teams as one of the leaders in the productivity management space. This type of tool is proving immensely useful for people working in roles that require a lot of meetings and need quick insights into meeting summaries and notes.
AI: The blooper reel
AI is as susceptible to making mistakes as the people that code it. Over the past year, as companies have become more confident with their AI investments and strategies, there have been some real gems. Here are some of the best (and the worst):
McDonald’s recently retired its AI voice ordering tool after it created food orders that were…less than tasty. From ice-cream with tomato sauce and butter to creating mega orders for the wrong cars, the AI trial run didn’t go according to the fast-food giant’s plans.
Robot Parkour – Robots need training to learn, and that learning means making mistakes. If you want to enjoy a funny five minutes with a Boston Dynamics AI making endless parkour errors, this video is for you.
Delivery robots aren’t the brightest AI on the block and can really struggle with basic navigation. Like this one, which doesn’t quite know where it’s going or why.
On a slightly sadder note, an Air Canada chatbot gave out false information about bereavement fares, resulting in the company having to pay damages to the poor employee.
Then in another famous case, an attorney used ChatGPT to help him with his research into prior cases to support a case he was undertaking. ChatGPT did help him, but with completely fake cases and false names that, unfortunately, the attorney didn’t check before using them in court.
There are many other bloopers with AI, and many highlight the ethical concerns that the technology raises. For example, there is a clear racial and gender bias in many of the mistakes made by bots in applications, healthcare and chats. The Amazon AI-recruitment tool only recommended men, a Microsoft chatbot turned racist and sexist, and a healthcare algorithm didn’t even notice black patients, removing them entirely from its recommendations.
The future of this technology may not be set in stone, but its use cases and careful consideration of bias and ethics should be. It’s a superb technology, but must remain within the right boundaries to ensure people and businesses remain protected.
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