Blog : AI

<em>How AI Is Disrupting the Modern Office</em>

How AI Is Disrupting the Modern Office

If you had to sum up the recurring theme of the last several years in virtually all areas of our lives, “disruption” would be the word you would undoubtedly use.

We have witnessed some significant and thrilling instances of disruption, such as how a community of Reddit users utilized the Robinhood app to revolutionize our perception of stocks. However, the impact of mobile apps on financial markets is merely the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the various forms of disruption that we have encountered.

Another form of disruption that is prominent in ways both large and small takes the form of AI, or artificial intelligence. In just a few short years it’s changed the makeup of the modern office significantly – something that is true in a number of ways that are worth exploring.

The Role of AI in the Ever-Changing World of Work

For decades, managers have existing in an office environment primarily for the purposes of “people management.” They help make sure that team members and other employees are staying on-task, are moving in the right direction, are keeping up with all necessary deliverables, etc.

With AI tools that are already available, all of this can now be automated. An estimation between 40% and 50% of human resources functions are now using many AI-augmented applications to perform these tasks with greater ease and accuracy than ever before. Somehow, this has simultaneously managed to make the human resources department more valuable than ever thanks to the timely and accurate insight that it can generate, while also completely shifting the definition of what employees working within this department are expected to do.

As the world rapidly adopts AI technology, even Zoom has hopped on the bandwagon. In a recent announcement, the video conferencing platform revealed its collaboration with OpenAI, the creators of ChatGPT, to introduce AI-powered features, primarily targeting sales teams, marking a major shift for the company.

The feature, dubbed Zoom IQ for Sales, uses artificial intelligence to digest the massive volumes of data that organizations are already creating to generate an accurate and real-time engagement score for all customers in a system. It is intended to give insight into how “attentive” a customer is based on the amount of time that passes between when they make contact, how long they speak during calls, the number of times they speak when talking to an employee, and more. It also generates a sentiment score that essentially measures how positive or negative their attitude is when they participate in meetings.

In an instance, tasks that formerly took up a significant amount of a sales representative’s day in the office are now handled quickly, easily, and accurately by an AI tool. This in turn frees up as much of their valuable time as possible to focus on matters that truly need their attention.

But how soon will it be before these same AI tools are essentially running our Zoom meetings for us? Suddenly what was once a pivotal collaborative tool during the pandemic becomes yet another opportunity for automation. If that isn’t a perfect example of disruption – and the rapid pace it often arrives with – nothing is.

In the end, it’s truly incredible to think about that which has been made possible thanks to AI in an office environment over a (relatively) short period of time. From the role of automation in allowing employees to work smarter, not harder, to the recent emergence of tools like ChatGPT. When you consider all that artificial intelligence has been able to disrupt in just a few short years, it’s truly amazing to think about what the next few might have in store for us all.

<em>The Disruption of AI in the Healthcare Space</em>

The Disruption of AI in the Healthcare Space

Much has been written about artificial intelligence over the last several months – particularly when it comes to consumer search.

ChatGPT debuted mere months ago, and it’s already being heralded as the natural evolution of the chatbot. Not only can it do everything from answer complicated questions to generate responses to prompts, but it can even help generate content like resumes, blog posts, and more. Things have gotten to the point where, according to one recent study, an estimated 70% of people who regularly use ChatGPT at work to make their lives easier haven’t actually told their bosses that they’re doing so.

But while this may be the flashiest example of just how disruptive AI can be, it’s far from the first – or even the most important. Medical professionals have been using artificial intelligence in the healthcare space for years, for example – all in ways that are changing how we think about the care provided to patients and the potentially lifesaving outcomes that we’re able to generate.

AI and Healthcare: The Perfect Pairing

One of the most immediate ways in which artificial intelligence is being used in healthcare has to do with patient triage, particularly as it relates to reviewing images, scans, and other critical documents.

In an effort to find out what disease or condition a patient is suffering from, a doctor will typically order a battery of different tests. Those tests produce scans and diagnostic images of organs like the heart or lungs that then need to be carefully reviewed. The issue is that not only does this typically take a great deal of time, but it is also susceptible to human error as well.

Artificial intelligence, however, can be trained on massive amounts of data to perform the same basic tasks in a fraction of the time. Not only can then quickly analyze images and other records at high speeds, but they can do so far more reliably than a human ever could. This can lead to a faster diagnosis on behalf of the patient, which can get them the care they need quicker and improve outcomes along the way. Not only that, but it frees up the invaluable time of the medical professional to focus more on those matters that could truly use their attention.

The same concept holds true to the way that artificial intelligence is being used to train doctors, nurses, and other clinicians as well. Again, once an AI system has been given the chance to ingest the right, quality dataset, it can review information and “make decisions” with an incredibly high degree of accuracy. When used as an assistive training tool, this can help to minimize the types of mistakes that new doctors are likely to make, can help usher in more accurate clinical judgments, and more. All of this results in better trained medical professionals getting out into the field far faster and with a more robust education than ever.

All of this helps bring about the most important benefit of all: higher quality and better healthcare for larger numbers of people, allowing for lifesaving treatment along the way.

Based on use cases like those outlined above, it’s easy to see why it has been estimated that artificial intelligence could save the healthcare industry approximately $360 billion per year. Once obstacles like slow adoption rates among doctors and patients are overcome, there truly is no limit to the potential that is on display in front of us.

In the end, it’s safe to say that technology is changing just about every facet of our lives. In a world where a collection of Reddit users can use a mobile app like the Robinhood app to disrupt the stock market, should anyone be surprised of what AI is capable of in contexts like healthcare? Perhaps it is best to think about it this way: what is impressive is not necessarily what AI can do today, but what it will potentially be able to accomplish tomorrow. That in and of itself is truly exciting to think about.

Why Are You Hearing about “CX” Startups Popping Up Everywhere?

Okay, first of all, what even is CX? CX stands for customer experience. The experience of being a customer. And if you’re thinking that’s not revolutionary enough to disrupt something, you’re probably absolutely right. CX startups are companies like Zendesk; they’re companies that are designed to streamline the current customer experience. And they’re poised to disrupt because of AI. Let’s dig in.

Hand touching digital chat bot for provide access to information and data in online network, robot application and global connection, AI, Artificial intelligence, innovation and technology.

Disrupting the customer experience

So, go on Reddit and search for CX. It’s like user experience, user interfaces, and user design, but much more. It starts with a buyer’s journey and ends with you embedding yourself into every facet of their being. For example, the Robinhood App has poor CX. They barely respond to anyone.

The customer experience is a relationship that customers build with a business. And it’s becoming important because customers are seeking these experiences. Look at Apple. People want to call themselves Apple or iOS users. People want to connect with the brand that they’re using.

But more than that, there’s AI.

The AI chatbots are disrupting customer satisfaction

In the old days, we hated phone trees, right? 

If you’re a younger millennial, you have no idea what that means. A phone tree is a directory; when you call in, you get directed to different areas of a company. There weren’t any voice prompts, and the phone trees could get five or six levels dense.

“Do you want accounting? Do you want receivables? Do you want Steve? Steve A or Steve S?”

The earliest chatbots operated like this, too, and they sure weren’t going to disrupt anything. If you called, say, Reddit, you’d get an automated voice telling you to press 1, 2, or 3. If you then went on a live chatbot (let’s assume Reddit ever wanted anyone to contact them, because you actually cannot contact Reddit at all), the chatbot would tell you much the same.

But now chatbots have differentiated themselves. You can talk to them in natural language, and they respond. This is something called Natural Language Processing.

What does it mean for you?

You could start a CX web3 machine-learning startup today, and realistically, most people wouldn’t even know what you do. But they would throw money at you.

Today, CX is mostly about using automation and artificial intelligence to smooth the customer experience, reducing friction across multiple channels. So the reality is that a CX startup is someone who is using high technology to make the customer experience better.

So you’ve got AI. And you’ve also got web3, because this is what people are expecting web3 to be. They go on their mobile app, they load up a page, and they see furniture in real life through augmented reality. They see furniture, scan it with a mobile app, and immediately buy it.

Let’s all move to a better customer experience

Part of it is that people do need a better CX. Amazon made itself an empire because of fast returns and good customer service. Guess what: That’s how Sears was an empire for over 100 years. A better customer experience is essential, and it’s a great industry to be in.

As the economy falters, customers are increasingly operating solely within realms they want to operate with. Newer customers have been more concerned with customer experience than product quality. That’s right. They’ll stick with a mediocre product because they… want a good experience.

How far could you get if you could help other companies build those experiences?

5 Benefits of Conversational AI That You Should Know

Source

Conversational Artificial Intelligence (AI) is a form of AI that can recognize and respond to natural human speech. The emergence of this technology has led to some impressive innovations in customer service, eCommerce, and beyond.

If you’re not already using conversational AI in your business, you may be wondering what all the fuss is about. As more people today get used to having their own virtual assistant at all times, any customer-centric business that doesn’t offer a similar level of convenience and accessibility is likely to get left behind.

Over 60% of customers today report preferring instant messaging a business instead of calling. There’s clearly a real appetite for conversational AI applications in customer service. However, this technology can do much more than provide support to your customers; it can also be used internally to boost efficiency and productivity.

Conversational AI can be used in many ways to improve customer service, increase sales, and streamline business processes. Here are five benefits of conversational AI that you should know about:

Better Customer Service

The impact of AI on customer experience is already being felt by businesses and consumers alike. Thanks to the development of natural language processing (NLP), conversational AI understands human speech. This technology is constantly improving, meaning that chatbots and virtual assistants are becoming more and more accurate at understanding the nuances of human conversation.

Improving the customer experience with conversational AI is one of the easiest ways to set your business apart from the competition right now.

Boost your customer service with these nifty features:

  • Automation– Automating simple tasks that would otherwise require the attention of a human agent, including complaints. This frees up your agents to deal with more complex issues and provides a more efficient support system for your customers.
  • Gather and analyze real-time customer data– You can use conversational AI to collect data about your customers’ preferences and pain points. This valuable information can be used to improve your product or service offering.
  • No language barriers– Conversational AI brings the power of machine translation to the customer service arena. This means that businesses can offer support in multiple languages without the need to hire bilingual agents.

Personalized Customer Interactions

Source

Linking your conversational AI platform to a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system provides a wealth of customer data that can be used to personalize interactions.

The CRM system stores all relevant customer information in one place, including contact details, order history, and past interactions with your business. This information can be used to create a customer profile which is then used to personalize conversations and ensure they are relevant to the customer. This not only increases customer satisfaction but can also lead to a higher customer lifetime value.

Helps You Scale

Source

Growing your business too fast should be a good problem. You don’t want to stop growing just because your company can’t physically or affordably support more customers. But when all your agents are busy with current customers, how do you take on more without sacrificing quality?

This is where conversational AI can help. Most customer queries can be answered without the need for a human agent. Leveraging conversational AI can help you to automate simple customer interactions, freeing up your human agents to focus on the more complex queries. This can help you to scale your support function and handle more customers without sacrificing quality.

Smaller companies may find it difficult to afford the customer service infrastructure to support a large customer base. However, conversational AI makes it possible for them to offer the same level of customer service at a fraction of the cost.

Lower Operational Costs

24/7 availability is a costly proposition for most businesses. Staffing your customer service department round the clock can be prohibitively expensive, but with conversational AI you can offer this level of support at a fraction of the cost.

Conversational AI platforms are powered by artificial intelligence and machine learning which means they get smarter over time. This means that the more queries they handle, the more accurate their responses become. This can help to reduce the number of staff required to provide customer support and keep your operational costs low.

Easy Follow-Ups with Customers

One of the challenges of customer service is that it can be difficult to follow up with customers after they have interacted with your company. Conversational AI can help to resolve this issue by automating the process of following up with customers. This can be done using several methods, such as sending an automated email or SMS message, or by including a follow-up question in your conversational AI platform.

The value of customer service lies in its ability to build relationships with customers. By following up with customers after they have interacted with your company, you can show them that you are interested in their experience and that you value their business.

Conversational AI offers several benefits that can help businesses to improve customer service and reduce operational costs. It is scalable, affordable, and efficient—making it the perfect solution for businesses of all sizes. Whether you’re a small business or a large enterprise, conversational AI can help you to improve customer satisfaction and loyalty, setting you up for long-term success!

What the heck is GPT3 and why will it disrupt every industry?

What the heck is GPT3 and why will it disrupt every industry?

GPT3 is like Bitcoin that makes your Alexa and Siri look like Dogecoin! If you are reading this there is a likelihood GPT3 may disrupt your entire industry. 

The originator is Manuel Araoz, but halfway through the piece he confesses that he did not write it. The article was fully written by GPT-3. He received access to OpenAI API, and was amazed at the raw power of GPT-3, after only giving it access to his homepage, a title, some tags, and a summary. 

“OpenAI, a non-profit artificial intelligence research company backed by Peter Thiel, Elon Musk, … and others, released its third generation of language prediction model (GPT-3) into the open-source wild…”

So, GPT-3–Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3–generates text. It can create anything that has a language structure. You can ask it a question; prompt it to write an essay or summarize a long passage of text, translate languages, take memos. Since apps and web design are structured language, GPT-3 makes coding easier and faster.

Will GPT-3 as Marc Strassman, Founder & Executive Director at GPT-3 Society predicts, put a lot of writers out of business?  That’s an open question for now, but there is no doubt that AI has the potential to add even more to information overload by producing more content than anyone can absorb. The good news for writers is that GPT-3 can generate lots of useful new ideas and back them up with facts and evidence.

What is actually occurring inside GPT-3’s programming may not be all that clear, but what it does best is harvesting text found on the internet and creating a vast “scrapbook” glued together and available on demand. The quality and durability of its end-products depend on the reader’s taste and preference. 

Said one observer, “GPT-3 often performs like a clever student who hasn’t done their reading trying to bullshit their way through an exam. Some well-known facts, some half-truths, and some straight lies, strung together in what first looks like a smooth narrative.”

However, GPT-3 is a quantum step up from its previous GPT-2 version, released in 2020. GPT-2 spat out pretty convincing streams of text when prompted with an opening sentence. Compared with GPT-2’s vast 1.5 billion parameters, GPT-3 is over a hundred times more powerful with its 175 billion neural network ties at work in text generation and automated learning.

Michael Ryaboy, GPT-3 Prompt Engineer at Codebuddy in San Francisco adds a writer’s perspective to how GPT-3 will disrupt society:                                                                            

Most repetitive writing tasks such as copywriting will be in large part done by GPT-3…Similarly, a model like GPT-3 can greatly increase your writing productivity by writing for you if you are stuck… (For gaming programmers) Tools like GPT-3 will also be used to create immersive realities, as thousands of subplots for a video game can be created in minutes, and AI Dungeon already allows cohesive text-based explorations.”

Will AI-powered technology eventually become smarter than humans? Elon Musk fears that is so. He has warned that our existence as human beings could be at stake. Musk warns “that we’re headed toward a situation where AI is vastly smarter than humans.”

The operating term here is “technological singularity.” That is the hypothetical point in time when technological growth becomes so exponentially expansive that it becomes incontrollable and irreversible. The disruption and changes to human civilization, according to the hypothesis, can result in unforeseeable disruption and changes to human civilization.

Not everyone agrees with Elon Musk’s pessimism. AI pioneer Yoshua Bengio’s view is that we “are very far from super-intelligent AI systems and there may even be fundamental obstacles to get much beyond human intelligence.”

As Cofounder, Create Labs Ventures Abran Maldonado stated, “It will put the power of AI technology into the hands of more creative and mission driven communities outside of tech. This technology has lowered the barrier to entry and will allow new groups to enter the space and stay focused on the problems they are trying to solve.” 

And according to the CEO of OpenAi, Sam Altman, all the hype about GPT-3 is “too much.”Yes, he agrees, “AI is going to change the world, but GPT-3 is just an early glimpse.” He identifies three main impediments to AI taking over everything:

1. AI is hugely expensive to use because of the vast amount of computing power needed to do its work. So, the cost of using it could be well beyond the budget of smaller organizations.

2. GPT-3 is a “closed” or “black-box” system. OpenAI has not revealed full details of its algorithms. So, if you rely on a technology to answer questions or create produces, you can’t be entirely sure how those answers or product solutions came about.

3. The output is far from perfect. GPT-3 can handle tasks like creating basic apps and short texts, but often tends to deteriorate and produce gibberish when tasked to produce something longer and complex. 

How GPT-3 will disrupt everything else

Mobile App developers are already leveraging GPT-3 to do some amazing things with very little effort beyond plain language requests. Some examples:

Generating web and app design code based on text descriptions. 

All that design code is already there. Developers can simply describe what they want, like “a layout that contains 3 buttons with a random color.” Watch this stunning display of GPT-3s plain language coding on this YouTube video.

Getting medical advice and answers. 

One medical student in the UK used GPT-3 to answer medical and health care questions. His program gives correct answers to plain English questions as well as the underlying science and biology.

Converting legalese to plain language, and vice versa. 

The law is one of the most text-driven professions. There are GPT-3 apps that can write pleas, motions, and other complicated legal documents and translate their text back to understandable English. For example, “my landlord neglected the property,” becomes “The Defendants allowed the real property to fall into disrepair…”

Finally, will GPT-3 send Siri and Alexa packing?

Probably not anytime soon, Michael Ryaboy believes that “Siri and Alexa do their job well. They are designed to allow you to do tasks through speech and not to maintain engaging conversation.” Until someone comes up with a better idea that Apple and Amazon are willing to throw out those top performers, they will probably be around for a while yet.

Let Colure help you design your mobile app and mobile app marketing

So, where do you fit into all that disruption? If you’re an innovative app developer or business owner and want to tackle some of our world’s most pressing challenges and harness AI to make everyone’s life better, contact us today. Colure’s Mobile App Development Team can get you going on your next projector to be interviewed and featured in our next series of “Project Venus.” 

Artificial intelligence and SEO

Artificial intelligence and SEO

Search engine optimization (SEO) is the process of affecting the visibility of a website or a web page in a web search engine’s results page (SERP). Complicated algorithms examine tremendous amounts of data to produce these results.

To facilitate this workload, search engines now employ the use of artificial intelligence (AI). This change has made it necessary for legitimate digital marketers to refine their efforts to maintain quality in terms of technical SEO and content development.

The artificial intelligence learns and uses natural language processing, meaning that AI SEO becomes smarter and more human-friendly. AI is trained by using known data, such as:

  • Content

  • Links

  • User behavior

  • Trust

  • Citations

  • Patterns

The AI systems then analyze that data using user experience, big data, and machine learning to develop new ranking factors. The process is capable of producing marketable results most likely to meet user needs.

RankBrain is Google’s machine-learning, artificial intelligence system that helps process its search results. The system uses an entirely new way of processing queries. This portion of the search engine’s core algorithm looks at search terms that have not been used before and compares the keywords against other searches to determine what type of results the end user is looking for.

Google’s RankBrain is just one form of artificial “narrow intelligence,” which means that, while it can perform things better than a human in one specific area, it is still a relatively weak form of artificial intelligence.

Yet, AI offers marketers insights that will improve ad campaigns. Adopting AI specifically for SEO efforts presents marketers with tactics that enable them to rank higher in search engines and get their ads seen by more people. The data provides insight that enable you to optimize a website, build links with the high-authority domains, and identifies the best keywords to use for each webpage.

Artificial intelligence has now progressed into deeper learning. While combined with search engine optimization, the list of possibilities to perform tasks has brought a whole new way to produce search engine results.

The execution of SEO has changed because Google, Bing, and all the other search engines are employing artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the content of pages.

When SEO is combined with artificial intelligence there are improvements in the results that come from search engine optimization.

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the cost of information

Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the cost of information

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has been a growing field for decades, but the uprise in virtual assistants in the home has opened a new channel of advertising. With it comes new challenges. Virtual assistants, like Apple’s Siri or Amazon’s Alexa, give consumers a hands-free, hassle-free way of looking up information, keeping track of their plans for the day, or even trying new recipes. But the marketing industry has been hit hard by consumers’ new ability to make purchases or browse the internet without being exposed to a traditional advertisement.

AI brings both benefits and pitfalls to the marketplace. Marketers have new tools at their disposal, but they’ve also been given quite a few hurdles to jump through.

Pros of AI:

  • Virtual assistant devices offer better, more precise data that’s willingly volunteered by consumers. For example, Amazon gets detailed, individualized data with every task Alexa takes on.
  • AI creates a discrete form of advertising that doesn’t feel like a marching band of business owners trying to sell you their products. For example, ask Alexa to buy you a soda, and she immediately suggests the top two products, one of them being a 24-pack of Izze Sparkling Juice drinks. Izze drinks are getting quick advertising to interested customers disguised as a casual conversation. Consumers don’t recognize advertising as easily in this new and unmarked territory.

Cons:

  • Now that consumers are able to order a new product or search something on the internet without even pushing a button, the emphasis on digital marketing is threatened. Desktop and mobile devices have been the biggest platforms for reaching consumers. Only time will tell how AI will modify the relationship between customers and new businesses.
  • AI devices are always listening to all sound sources in the home, waiting to be activated. AI marketing is supposed to be the next big leap in marketing, but what information is gathered, how, and what happens to that data? What price are customers willing to pay for those advancements. Privacy in our homes is guaranteed by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Will consumers give up that right by agreeing to a software licensing agreement? Sometimes, with no marked path to follow, a fresh line will need to be drawn when it comes to what is ethical and what is business-savvy.

AI emphasizes the importance of Search Engine Optimization (SEO) more than anything. Recommendations by virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri are based on the top results in search engines. Making sure that your service or product is at the top of the list will allow your business to wedge its way into those recommendations. AI management of various details in our lives can be a great asset. The question becomes, “what will be the cost of that growth?”